Foreign policy is rarely the deciding factor in US midterm elections, when economic considerations usually drive voters choices.
But this time, with Donald Trump’s war on Iran and his sweeping tariff campaign pushing up costs for Americans, a presidents approach to world affairs has itself become a pocketbook issue.
As the November 3 elections approach, there are growing signs that voters are drawing that connection directly, creating a major liability for Trump and his fellow Republicans and imperilling their control of Congress.
Those include a Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month showing some 78 per cent of Americans blame Trump’s policies for rising prices that are outpacing their earnings.
Not since 2006, when then-president George W Bush’s Republicans lost both legislative chambers while he was mired in the unpopular Iraq war, has a US leaders handling of international events appeared so central to shaping the midterms outcome.
The political backlash for Trump could be even bigger, with opinion polls showing that voters feel the economic pain from high gas prices and rising grocery bills in a way that they didn’t two decades ago.
The bottom line is people are experiencing the impact of Trump’s war and other policies, said Christopher Preble, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington. Now voters have a chance to register their discontent with how he’s dealing with all this.
Politics driving foreign policy
With Trump’s approval ratings touching historic lows, he has left little doubt, despite his public claims to the contrary, that he sees the straight line voters are drawing between his foreign policy and their cost of living.
That has prompted some controversial policy moves in the run-up to the elections.
Chief among them was Trump’s lifting of sanctions on Russian diesel exports aimed at bringing down fuel prices, a step his critics, including some fellow Republicans, say reinforces the impression that he is increasingly siding with Moscow in its war in Ukraine.
He has also pressed Kyiv to halt strikes on Russian refineries as he tries to shift the blame for high US gasoline prices despite experts saying the surge in energy costs is mainly the result of the war he launched alongside Israel against Iran nearly eight months ago.
At the same time, he has promised not to order any new attack on Iran before the midterms, though the US and Israel are widely reported to be preparing for a possible major escalation after the elections.
Polls have shown that most voters oppose the war initiated by Trump, who had campaigned on avoiding new foreign interventions. He has insisted Americans should accept temporarily higher gas prices so that he can block Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. The UN nuclear watchdog and US intelligence community have assessed that Tehran shuttered a nuclear weapons development programme in 2003.
Some Republican candidates have distanced themselves from Trump on matters ranging from the conflict in the Middle East to the trade war with Canada and his pressure campaign against Ukraine.
For its part, Iran has sought to keep oil prices high and hurt Trump in the midterms by deploying new tactics to target ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz and deliberately prolonging the diplomatic stalemate, senior Iranian officials have told Reuters.
Defending the administration’s approach, White House spokesman Matt Middleton said: “President Trump has always been clear about temporary market disruptions as a result of the conflict in Iran, but the contrast between President Trump’s economic record and Democrats’ ruinous alternative is clear.”
It’s the economy, stupid
Midterm elections historically have been seen as a referendum on the performance of the incumbent in the White House.
And in one election after another in recent decades, the conventional wisdom has been that economic concerns — it’s the economy, stupid, as the Clinton-era adage goes — dominate voters’ choices.
Opinion polls for this year’s midterms, including the Reuters/Ipsos survey, show that while voters rank foreign policy low on their list of priorities, it is clear that most Americans see some of Trump’s signature moves on the world stage, such as the Iran war and tariffs, feeding into their higher costs.
Other polls have shown that a majority of Americans have also soured more broadly on Trump’s international approach.
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs said its latest nationwide survey finds that most Americans believe the Trump administration’s foreign policy actions have negatively impacted America’s global standing and hurt national and household economic conditions.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has shaken up the rules-based global order that Washington helped create from the ashes of World War Two while his relations with allies have steadily worsened and the limits of US power have been increasingly exposed, analysts say.
Legislative balance of power in play
Against this backdrop, Democrats are widely projected to gain control of the House of Representatives in the midterms, with the Senate also seen as increasingly in play.
For Republicans, losing either chamber could complicate Trump’s agenda in the last two years of his second term.
But even with a shift in the balance of power on Capitol Hill on Nov 3, lawmakers will have a hard time reining in Trump’s capacity to pursue foreign policy as he sees fit.
Once the ballots are counted, a big question will be whether Trump will feel either restricted or emboldened on the world stage as he enters what is traditionally considered a lame-duck phase — when a president is barred from running again and no longer faces electoral consequences for decisions made.
“For many presidents who feel politically constrained [at home], foreign policy is the area where they are able to act with relative freedom,” said Jon Alterman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
Analysts say Trump’s handling of adversaries such as Iran, Russia, China and even Cuba or his approach to allies across the globe could go either way — or he could simply lose interest and double down on his string of construction projects, such as the White House ballroom.