A column published by Adevărul argues that Tuesday’s United States midterm elections, halfway through the presidential term, will matter greatly for Europe, including Romania. The author says they correctly anticipated Donald Trump’s victory two years ago and now expect the Democrats to win the House of Representatives. They also estimate a Democratic majority in the Senate, while noting that the contest there is much tighter and that only about one third of seats are at stake.
The column cites a Reuters/Ipsos poll in which only 32 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance. It points first to the war with Iran, described as enormously costly in lives and with economic effects beyond the Middle East. In Romania and Europe, the author writes, those effects appear in energy and fuel prices, while Americans also pay more at the pump, for transport and for many goods and services. The United States, the column says, is now borrowing long term at interest rates not seen for more than twenty years, and the financial burden is growing.
Trump won the 2024 election, the author recalls, promising to end costly wars and to focus first on Americans’ own problems. Two years later, the column says, the United States is in a war with Iran whose end is nowhere in sight, and the conflict could intensify again quickly, with devastating consequences for the region and for international markets. Dissatisfaction, it adds, is no longer confined to Democrats: cracks have appeared inside the MAGA electorate, including among people who believed Trump would keep the country out of such conflicts.
On the eve of the vote, the column says, Trump spoke in Washington in front of the Abraham Lincoln memorial about renovating a monumental pool, about algae and about works that have beautified the capital. The author questions how many Americans facing higher prices and larger bills wanted to hear, in these days, about a renovated pool. The column also cites migration: Trump’s 2024 promise of order at the borders, and deportation methods that produced protests, clashes and rejection even among some voters who support immigration control.
A Democratic victory should not be read as a broad embrace of the Democratic Party, the author cautions. Democrats are not doing extraordinarily well in popularity polls and have their own problems and divisions. The column treats the likely result mainly as a vote against the way Trump has used power, and as a reminder that a protest vote against an opponent is different from a vote of confidence.
For Europe, the author warns that a Republican defeat would not automatically make Trump more moderate or more predictable. Blocked in Congress, he might rely more on executive decisions and on foreign policy. The issues named as directly relevant are European security, the war in Ukraine, trade relations and the future of the transatlantic partnership.
The column says Washington is already discussing a possible meeting of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, with the proposal coming from Putin. The author describes Putin as seeking a new Yalta, in which a few great powers settle spheres of influence and the fate of other countries. For Romanians, who the column says paid with almost half a century of communist dictatorship for the order imposed on Eastern Europe after 1945, that prospect should be especially worrying, above all if such talks took place without Ukraine and without Europe. The author presents this as a further reason to consolidate the European Union, including in geostrategic terms.
The column remains convinced that the alliance with the United States is essential for Romania and that America neither begins nor ends with Donald Trump. It also argues that Europe must strengthen its ability to take decisions and defend its interests whoever controls the US Congress. The elections, the author concludes, already show Americans calling Trump to account for how he has used the power he won two years ago by promising to solve problems other politicians could not.