President Donald Trump agreed on Monday to delay his planned tariff increases on Canadian and Mexican imports by another month—but the very fact that he’d intended to kick off a new continental trade war this week left behind some international wreckage. Both Canada and Mexico are signatories to the free trade agreement that Trump himself negotiated and implemented during his first term, which made a few updates to the original NAFTA framework including, ironically, lowered barriers for agricultural exchange between the U.S. and Canada. Yet Trump decried his own arrangements and blustered about a newfound approach based on a desire to annex Canada and a baseless accusation that Mexico’s government allies with drug cartels.

All nations involved reached a white peace—at least temporarily. But their relations have forever changed. There are plenty of flashing alarm signs that are inspiring Canada and Mexico, along with many other nervous allies, to reduce their dependence on the U.S. in the long term.

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Canadians’ contempt for Trump 2.0 was on stark display this weekend: loud boos of the U.S. national anthem at sporting events, and a cross-partisan, cross-ideological effort to inflict economic pain on Americans. The social democratic premier of British Columbia said his province would stop buying alcohol from Republican-dominated states (e.g., Tennessee whiskey, Kentucky bourbon); the Conservative premier of Ontario threatened to rip up the province’s contract with Starlink, the satellite internet service from Elon Musk’s SpaceX; Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a graduated rollout of 25 percent countertariffs across $155 billion worth of U.S. goods. Those counterattacks are on pause for now, but New Brunswick is still planning to boycott American liquor for the foreseeable future. And dozens of mayors of U.S.–Canada border towns have formed an anti-tariff advocacy alliance of their own.

It cannot be overestimated what a wild shift this presents in the long history of U.S.–Canada friendship—one that’s been molded over time for both countries to be as supportive of each other as possible, whether in regard to trade, military actions, environmental regulation, or even just whipping up votes for a particular United Nations resolution. Trump and Trudeau exchanged spats over metals tariffs in 2018 before they finalized their revamped trade agreement, but that never escalated to the type of standoff we just witnessed.

You could even view Trump’s belligerence with Canada as a breach of contract, one that likewise applies to Mexico. However fraught the history between the U.S. and its southern neighbor, the fact is that they depend on each other greatly—as multibillion-dollar trade and investment partners, as frequent tourist and student destinations for each other’s populations, and as hubs of cultural exchange.

Of course, those relations have been tense even since Trump’s first term, when he demanded that Mexico “pay for” the border wall and mitigate its outward migration or else get slapped with 5 percent tariff hikes. But even before this latest dispute over trade and immigration, Mexico was willingly going toe-to-toe with the Trump 2.0 regime: refusing to comply with the “Remain in Mexico” deterrence of asylum-seekers, forbidding the U.S. military planes that transport deported immigrants, and insisting upon broader Latin American regional sovereignty, whether that includes Panama’s right to the canal, Mexico’s right to name the gulf, or immigrants’ rights to safe and humane conditions regardless of whether they entered the U.S. illegally.

President Claudia Sheinbaum did agree, this time, to send troops to the northern border to control outward migration, but she also extracted a promise from the U.S. to “prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.” Canada, in its own counternegotiations with the U.S., merely re-upped a commitment it made back in December to implement a $1.3 billion border security plan, which Trump passed off as a new concession.

The broader implications of last month’s tariffs-and-immigration squabble between Trump and Colombia—traditionally the United States’ closest Latin American ally—did not go unnoticed. If anything, that just added to a whole heap of actions the Musk-Trump administration has already taken, and is still taking, to demonstrate the extent of its commitment to ripping apart old agreements, relationships, and promises with other members of the global community. The many examples include:

• The illegal dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, outsourced to Elon Musk and his frighteningly young cronies, which is already cutting off needed aid to poorer populations and undercutting American trustworthiness.

• The obstruction of PEPFAR, which was supposedly allowed to keep funding HIV and AIDS treatment in Asia and Africa, but has in reality been effectively blocked from doing that lifesaving work.

• The revamp of the State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio, which is already agreeing to send convicted U.S. citizens to brutal prisons in El Salvador, appointing white nationalists and Capitol insurrectionists to key positions, and all but scuttling necessary foreign aid.

• Trump’s latest threat to stop sending money to South Africa because of racist conspiracy theories about the supposed disenfranchisement of white Afrikaners.

• The withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, an expected but still frustrating backtrack that’s occurring as vulnerable nations continue to suffer the worst effects of the climate crisis and require assistance from richer nations.

• The withdrawal from the World Health Organization, plus the demand that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immediately stop working with the group and allow public health data to be censored on ideological grounds.

• Trump’s conditioning of further military support for Ukraine on the embattled country’s willingness to send over more of its rare earth materials.

• The ongoing destruction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is already deleting urgent public data on carbon dioxide emissions and weather patterns.

• Trump’s call for the U.S. to “take over” the Gaza Strip, all but endorsing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population while once again cutting off needed aid.

There’s a lot one can say about why all this is so unjust, whether you view it as a furtherance of America’s longtime plunder and exploitation of poorer nations, an abdication of its assumed postwar responsibility for shaping the liberal democratic world order, a persistent denial of its outsize role in fueling smaller countries’ climate disasters, or a mask-off moment in U.S. imperialism. (The fact that the aid freeze is hindering U.S. efforts to clear the leftover bombs from its 1970 invasion of Cambodia feels especially on the nose.) But no matter how you interpret it, there’s a much more blunt way you can characterize the consequences: We’re actively inviting the world to turn its back on America, to not just distrust it but to hold it in full contempt, and to turn to other friends whom they perceive as being more reliable, more resourceful, and less arbitrary in their decisionmaking, even if that isn’t necessarily true.

You’ve just gotta follow the money and see where it’s being redirected. Mexico and South America made sure to finalize their respective trade agreements with the European Union before Trump took office. The British Columbian premier who wanted to pull American liquor from provincial stores is already looking to other trade partners deemed more worthy of his important critical minerals and energy exports. Both Africa and Latin America are doubling down on their economic partnerships with China, no matter what Marco Rubio may say. (By the way, did you know that Rubio, as senator, once wrote a letter to President Joe Biden telling him to increase USAID funding so as to counter global Chinese influence?)

These days, China is doing more than any other nation to ramp up solar power and electric vehicle production while helping other countries with their infrastructure and public health needs. That’s why the head of the global Energy Transitions Commission is suggesting that China, the EU, and the United Kingdom band together on future climate collaborations without any American input. Now, does any of this mean that China is good and benevolent? Absolutely not—the Communist Party remains as censorious, controlling, bloodthirsty, and untrustworthy as ever. But the difference to the rest of the world is that the Chinese are there while the Americans simply are not.

Even countries that are reluctant to partner with China are stepping up even on the diplomatic level: Canada is pledging to double down on its own international aid and development efforts, which will be all the more effective, and appreciated, as war-torn areas such as Gaza and Syria gradually rebuild. There’s a recognition here that it’s actually better, for everyone, to help other nations make themselves more resilient to environmental shocks, earn enough investment to improve their economies, support their efforts to combat emergent pathogens, and to make themselves better, happier places to live overall.

Trump’s second term is accelerating the decline in global American authority that began under his first term and has only worsened since, despite the Biden interregnum. As demonstrated by the lack of universal global solidarity with Ukraine, the central banks bolstering their gold reserves as hedges against the U.S. dollar, and the growing number of nations advocating for Palestinian self-determination in the face of America’s material support for Israel’s worst war crimes, the clear geopolitical story of the post-Obama era has been American loss of power and influence.

This is not to overstate the case; the U.S. dollar remains the global reserve currency, and the West still controls the levers of the most essential diplomatic and monetary institutions worldwide. Still, the fact is that American power is slipping, and another Trump term does not look bullish for its long-term prospects. Chinese representatives are already flattering Colombia as it smarts from the recent U.S. standoff. Latin America and the Caribbean, which make for one-fifth of total U.S. trades, will undoubtedly limit that market access in favor of greater opportunities with China. The EU is exploring a “bazooka” option should Trump implement tariffs on the bloc, meaning that its 27 members would block off all financial exchanges and even geofence the borders to block American apps. The countries that remain dedicated to improving public health and addressing climate change will trade their metals and clean-energy materials and tech innovations and patents and medical necessities with one another instead of relying on the U.S.

The United States retains its position and primacy through trades with friends, agreements on issues on urgency, and historical trust. With all of that in free fall, the rest of the world may decide it will soon be time to just turn away instead of getting screwed again.

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