While Donald Trump Faces Domestic Political Hurdles, His Brand of Global Populism Continues to Flourish

Opposition presidential candidate Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro speaks after advancing to a runoff election following the first round of the presidential election in Brasilia, Brazil, on Sunday. President Donald Trump might be facing a political challenge at home, but his brand of conservative populist nationalism is thriving across the globe.

Rising star Flávio Bolsonaro’s shock win in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election Sunday bolstered Trump’s project of remaking the Western Hemisphere in his political image. Populist right-wingers are also gaining ground in Europe, fueled by the same failures of foreign leaders to tackle the cost of living and deliver promised change that are haunting US Republicans as the midterm elections draw near.

The radical anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) is catapulting into a national force as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government flatlines. France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen is leading the polls ahead of next year’s presidential election. These parties are not exact clones of Trump, and some predate his MAGA movement, but his rise to power and endurance serve as an inspiration to them. Furthermore, the administration loudly supports its nationalist brethren who threaten to topple the centrist European leaders the president meets at international summits.

Many far-right parties share the populist ethos that powered Trump’s stunning 2016 and 2024 campaigns, embracing protectionist economics and emulating his hostility toward elites, globalization, and mass immigration. It would be ironic if right-wing populists peak elsewhere just as Trump’s star fades, but he makes an unlikely lame duck and may copy other second-term presidents who aggressively tried to imprint their legacies on the world before leaving power.

The strength of conservative populism has conjured an existential moment for leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his new British counterpart Andy Burnham. Both are leading a fight-back by adopting rhetoric and programs designed to blunt the right and reinforce moderate, centrist government. Meanwhile, Trump’s intense political shifts seem to be stirring a separate counter-reaction, especially in the United States, as the success of democratic socialists in some midterm primaries heralds a new wave of left-wing populism.

Bolsonaro Jr.’s surprising ascent follows that of Abelardo De La Espriella, a right-wing insurgent who won Colombia’s presidential election earlier this year. Conservative governments friendly to the White House now rule in Costa Rica, after the election of populist Laura Fernández Delgado, and in El Salvador, Chile, and Honduras. In Argentina, President Javier Milei—the Trump acolyte who gifted a chainsaw to Elon Musk at a conservative conference—benefited from a $20 billion currency swap offer Trump made conditional on voters supporting his party in legislative elections. Trump is also stamping his influence on the region by propping up the leftist authoritarian Venezuelan regime while concluding oil-exporting deals that critics have styled as 21st-century imperialist plunder.

The populist tide may also lift one of the right-wing nationalist movement’s most abiding figures in France next year after three previous failed presidential bids. Le Pen has in the past been thwarted by her country’s two-stage electoral system as voters coalesced around moderate rivals, but the collapse of establishment center-right and center-left parties means she may face left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in a runoff.

European centrists are even more alarmed by the AfD, since far-right parties court particular notoriety in Germany, which has spent 80 years processing the shame of Nazism. The AfD is positioned to the right of Le Pen and MAGA, and its critics accuse it of historical denialism, antisemitism, and ethno-nationalism, yet it is now the second-biggest single party in Germany’s federal legislature. In 2025, Vice President JD Vance outraged Europeans by meeting AfD leader Alice Weidel in Munich while warning that immigration was destroying Western civilization, and last month, Trump backed the AfD on social media following a landslide win in the state of Saxony-Anhalt.

However, Trump has not had things entirely his own way. Far-right MAGA hero and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán fell from power this year despite Trump’s efforts to save him, and the president’s friendship with another conservative populist, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, soured over the Iran war and his claim that she begged him for a selfie.

To counter this movement, Carney reacted to Trump’s demands for Canada to become the 51st state by emerging as an informal leader of Western democracies. In the UK, Burnham used a speech at the Labour Party annual conference to address the resentment arising from economic blight that feeds right-wing populism, blaming the British Right dating back to Margaret Thatcher’s governments of the 1980s for pushing deregulation, de-industrialization, and privatization. If Burnham fails, however, Trump’s populist ally and Reform leader Nigel Farage is waiting in the wings.

Ultimately, while Trump-style populism may wax and wane, its resilience suggests it has become a permanent feature in global democracies, regardless of what the political fates hold for its primary patron.