Smile, Flatter and Barter: How the World Is Prepping for Trump Part II

Foreign leaders have rushed to ingratiate themselves with Donald J. Trump in recent days, nervously recalling the clashes, insults and feuds of his first presidency.

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Donald J. Trump at Trump Tower for dinner on Sept. 26, it was part of a British charm offensive to nurture a relationship between a left-wing leader and a right-wing potential president. So when Mr. Trump turned to Mr. Starmer before parting and told him, “We are friends,” according to a person involved in the evening, it did not go unnoticed.

Whether they stay friends is anybody’s guess.

For months leading up to Mr. Trump’s political comeback — and in the heady days since his victory was confirmed — foreign leaders have rushed, once again, to ingratiate themselves with him. Their emissaries have cultivated people in Mr. Trump’s orbit or with think tanks expected to be influential in setting policies for a second Trump administration.

Some leaders, like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, are crafting their pitches to appeal to Mr. Trump’s transactional nature; others, like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, have deployed teams of officials to the United States to visit dozens of Republican leaders in the hope that they can moderate Mr. Trump’s most radical instincts on imposing tariffs.

History suggests that many of these bridge-building efforts will fail. By the end of his first term, Mr. Trump had soured on several leaders with whom he started off on good terms. His protectionist trade policy and aversion to alliances — coupled with a mercurial personality — fueled clashes that overrode the rapport that the leaders had labored to cultivate.

“There were two misapprehensions about Trump,” Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister of Australia, said in an interview. “The first was, he would be different in office than he was on the campaign trail. The second was, the best way to deal with him was to suck up to him.”