The Memo: Trump fumes as foreign leaders show new willingness to defy him

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has none of President Trump’s penchant for controversy or headline-grabbing language — but these days, he’s putting emphatic distance between Berlin and Washington all the same.

Merz is not only declining to answer Trump’s call for help in reopening the vital Strait of Hormuz. He is being scathing of the president’s decision to wage war on Iran in the first place.

“To this day, there is no convincing plan for how this operation could succeed,” Merz told German legislators on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

“Washington has not consulted us and did not say European assistance was necessary. … We would have advised against pursuing this course of action as it has been pursued.”

Trump’s call for help has found few takers elsewhere.

French President Emmanuel Macron said at a Tuesday Cabinet meeting that his nation would “never take part” in efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz while the current conflict rages.

“We are not party to the conflict,” Macron noted.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been more circumspect in public but has got caught in Trump’s rhetorical crosshairs nonetheless. The president takes exception to Starmer’s disinclination to send British warships into the conflict zone.

In normal circumstances, around one-fifth of the world’s oil transits through the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran has succeeded in stifling shipping in the area, causing oil prices to spike and ratcheting up the domestic political pressure on Trump.

The international reticence about getting involved in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which began on Feb. 28, is not confined to Europe.

Australia’s transport minister, Catherine King, has said that her nation “won’t be sending a ship to the Strait of Hormuz,” adding that it’s “not something we’ve been asked or we’re contributing to.”

Now all eyes are turning to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on Thursday. She told her parliament on Wednesday that she expects the visit to be “extremely difficult.”

The prime minister signaled that her argument for not participating in operations over the Strait would be driven by constitutional restrictions on militarism in Japan, rooted in the aftermath of the Second World War.

“I intend to convey these points clearly and I’m sure the U.S. side understands these laws given our history,” Takaichi said, according to Bloomberg.

Whether Trump himself will extend empathy seems very much in doubt, given how he has fulminated about a lack of assistance. The president has blasted America’s traditional allies for their supposed ingratitude repeatedly in recent days.

In a Tuesday social media post, he said that, given the U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world, “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!” 

On Wednesday morning, he took to Truth Social again to ponder what would happen if he was to “finish off” the Islamic Republic and “let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?’”

“That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!!” he concluded.

But experts say there is little chance allies get “in gear” with what Trump wants anytime soon.

If anything, the incentives for many leaders, especially in Europe, are pointing in the opposite direction. Trump, unpopular on the continent to begin with, has further riled up his overseas critics by the administration’s meager consultation with any nation other than Israel before launching the strikes.

“Many European leaders are reluctant to support an operation they were not consulted on. There is a strong sense that the U.S. acted unilaterally and is now asking allies to help manage the consequences,” Elizabeth Carter, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at the University of New Hampshire, told this column.

Carter, who specializes in German politics, added that this reluctance was rooted in part in memories of the Iraq War launched by former President George W. Bush.

But, for foreign leaders and experts alike, the issue isn’t just the war on Iran.

On Tuesday, Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin pushed back against Trump on migration and the war in Ukraine during the traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit, even as he sat alongside the president.

A number of prior controversies have fed dissatisfaction among traditional allies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Trump’s references to Canada as a would-be “51st state” caused consternation — and resistance — north of the border.

In Europe, an even more profound break came when he appeared to grow serious about seizing control of Greenland from Denmark before backing off.

Separately, Trump caused outrage in January by claiming that non-U.S. NATO troops “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines” during the war in Afghanistan.

In fact, British armed forces suffered more than 450 fatalities in Afghanistan, and non-American nations in total accounted for almost one-third of all allied deaths. Even the mild-mannered Starmer hit out at Trump’s remarks as “insulting and frankly appalling.”

Carter, the professor, argued that Trump’s overall approach “has reinforced a deeper concern in Europe that the U.S. is no longer a reliable or predictable partner. It is not just individual comments on Greenland, Canada, or Afghanistan, but the broader pattern of inconsistency.”

Trump, naturally, sees things very differently. He frequently suggests that foreign allies are taking advantage of the United States, that they need to do more to take care of their own defense and, when it comes to Iran, that he alone had the resolve to act where others failed to do so.

To be sure, his supporters would likely agree.

But when it comes to Europe and beyond, that’s not the whole story.

A YouGov poll in January tested Trump’s popularity in six European nations: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

The share of adults with a favorable opinion of the U.S. president did not exceed 20 percent anywhere. In Germany, 11 percent viewed him favorably and 84 percent unfavorably.

With numbers like that, Merz and his fellow European leaders won’t be feeling much pressure at home to accede to Trump’s demands.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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