The Temporary King

After about a year of the Trump administration, a lot of people—especially international leaders—seem to be treating Trump like a temporary king. The reason is simple: his age. He is almost 80 years old, and by the time he finishes this term, he will be even older than Biden was. Because of that, many leaders see him as a short-term factor, not someone to plan a long future around.

You can see this in the way many leaders interact with him. They make big promises—about trade, investment, jobs, and cooperation—and Trump takes those promises as a win. But when you look at the actual data a year later, many of those promises are not being realized. They said the right things, but nothing really happened. It's not that they didn't "say it." It's that they didn't fully commit to making it real.

What's happening is that even when they publicly accommodate Trump and his policies, they also keep a backup plan. You can tell many world leaders, and even people inside governments, are doing the same thing: make temporary adjustments now, keep everything flexible, and be ready to reverse course when Trump is gone.

We've seen this before. During Trump's first administration, when Biden came in, many Trump policies were reversed quickly. I think a lot of world leaders remember that, and they are preparing for something similar. Right now, they are making promises that sound good, but they are not making deep, permanent changes. They are keeping things reversible.

It also fits a bigger pattern in American politics: the president's most powerful period is usually the first year. That's when they can do the most and push the most through. After that, momentum slows down. Then you reach the midterms, and after the midterms, everyone starts thinking about the next election. By the final year, the president's influence often drops sharply because the country is already focused on who comes next.

Trump follows the same pattern. The first year was the strongest and the most active. Now we're approaching the midterm cycle. After that, many people will expect Democrats to regain some power, which would create a more constrained government. Then by 2028, the focus will be the next election, and people will be looking at the next leader instead of Trump.

That's why many world leaders are treating this as temporary. They see how unstable the US has become, but they still want to keep the alliance together. So they play along, make promises, and keep relations smooth—but when it comes to real, fundamental, permanent changes, they avoid locking themselves in. They make temporary moves, preparing for the situation to change again.

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