If you were running a country—or a global corporation—would you bet the future of your people or your firm on the stability, reliability, and sanity of the United States of America in the coming years?

Increasingly, America’s closest allies and many other nations are answering that question the same way: No.

From Canada to Europe to Asia, governments are quietly “de-risking” from the United States. They are redesigning trade routes and relationships; rewriting defense and military procurement strategies; shifting supply chains; exploring ways diversify their financial systems away from the US dollar. All this, and more, is not about anti-American sentiment. It is about managing exposure to volatility.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States has become a strategic wild card. People around the world in all kinds of fields—politics, finance, trade, manufacturing, humanitarian work, even fine arts—are pricing that risk in real time and looking for ways to escape it.

For decades, American power rested on predictability. The US, for all of its errors and sins, guaranteed, managed and defended an international system based on increasing cooperation among nations. US allies could disagree with Washington and still assume that treaties would hold, tariffs would be negotiated (mostly downward in recent decades), and security guarantees would not be revoked on a whim. That stability allowed other nations to specialize—to intertwine their economies and defenses with the United States in ways that magnified American influence.

“No dominant power has ever had so much assistance from so many others,” wrote Kori Schake, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, in Foreign Affairs magazine last year.

All that is gone now. Or at least going fast.

Trump’s governing style—transactional, punitive, and personal—has introduced a radical uncertainty into international decision-making. Tariffs appear suddenly and are withdrawn just as abruptly. He hurls threats at adversaries and allies alike. The nation’s solemn security commitments—from NATO in Europe to US troops in South Korea—are hard to take seriously any more. Would you, if you were the leader of Taiwan or Lithuania?

Trump’s declaration that the US will “get” Greenland—a self-governing territory of Denmark, a staunch NATO ally—sounds like the death knell of the alliance as the world has known it for 80 years.

"If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops," Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said last week. "That is including NATO, and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War."

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For world leaders, Trump’s America is turning into a demented partner, a selfish giant, and they have quickly recognized that any dependence on the United States is no longer the strategic asset it was for decades. It’s a genuine vulnerability.

Three case studies:

Canada offers a clear example. The most economically integrated U.S. partner, Canada has begun making blunt, explicit moves to diversify trade and diplomatic relationships. Fast.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent high-profile outreach to China was a signal—both to Washington and to Canadian voters—that the country cannot afford to have all its economic leverage tied to one unpredictable partner. Canadian officials are careful to frame this as “diversification,” not a realignment. But the direction of travel is unmistakable.

“Canada must be looking elsewhere to expand our trade, to build our economy and to protect our sovereignty,” Carney said after he became PM. “We believe in the free and open exchange of goods, services and ideas. And if the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.”

That is music to Beijing’s ears.

In Europe, the response has been more structural—and more consequential.

For years, European leaders spoke vaguely about “strategic autonomy.” Under Trump, that rhetoric is being translated into procurement rules, industrial policy, and defense planning. The European Union is pushing joint defense spending and “buy European” incentives designed explicitly to reduce reliance on U.S. weapons systems and logistics chains. Germany, France, and others are reassessing how much of their national security should be dependent on American political moods.

Germany has embarked on a significant arms manufacturing push. They’re very good at that stuff, the Germans. It will mean major job losses in the US defense industry.

Asian allies face an even sharper dilemma. They depend on the United States for security while being deeply economically integrated with China. Trump’s threats of sweeping tariffs and secondary penalties—aimed not just at Beijing but at anyone who continues to trade with it—is forcing these countries into impossible choices.

The result has been a quiet acceleration of hedging strategies: deeper regional partnerships, “minilateral” defense arrangements, and investments in domestic industrial capacity.

In each case, the logic is the same. The US under Trump is increasingly a threat, not a dependable ally. Nations now need to reduce their vulnerability to the actions of the rogue superpower—us.

They call this “de-risking.” That is managerial language, not ideological language. De-risking does not mean abandoning a relationship. It means making sure you can survive it if/when it goes bad.

And here is the part Americans should pay attention to: once countries and companies build systems that can function without the United States at the center, American leadership and leverage quietly erodes.

The bottom line in all of this is clear: Our country will be weaker, poorer and less respected in the world after the second presidency of Donald Trump.

There is a temptation among some people to dismiss all this as overreaction, or to argue that allies will ultimately fall back in line because America remains so rich, so powerful, so indispensable. There is some truth in that—today. But indispensability is not a permanent condition. It is maintained through credibility, restraint, and predictability.

In Trump’s first term, the critical question that other nations were asking was whether he would withdraw the United States from our country’s commitments around the world. This time, that question has become irrelevant.

This time, they are withdrawing from proximity to our American chaos, and are already building a future that will work just fine without us.

—Terry