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Trump’s US no longer a reliable ally, warns Belgium in leaked document (www.ft.com)
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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11504538

Archived link (removepaywall.com)

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Belgium’s foreign ministry has warned internally that the US under Donald Trump is no longer a reliable ally and urged officials to cultivate ties with his opponents to protect the country’s interests, according to a document seen by the FT.

As alarm mounted in Europe about Trump’s apparent hostility to traditional allies in the region, the ministry set out a strategy to “calibrate” engagement with Washington to protect Belgian interests while avoiding being seen as “hostile”, the internal document shows.

“It is now clear that the American partner is no longer the ally it has been in the past,” says the strategy document, produced by the ministry’s Americas and Caribbean unit in late 2025.

It calls for a “thorough re-evaluation of the relation between the European Union and Belgium on the one hand, and the US on the other hand,” adding that “the dynamics currently at play in the United States… are likely to compromise several vital interests of Belgium and the European Union”.

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The Belgian document says that “an engagement with the current US administration remains indispensable”, dialogue with the levels below the federal government should be “significantly reinforced”, including with both Republican and Democratic states and mayors of large cities.

It also recommends keeping up discussions with the Democratic opposition, engaging with Congress and “identifying the new generations of bipartisan elites that could play a role in tomorrow’s America”.

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The document — dated October 27 2025, roughly eight months after Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s government took power — also notes: “We should not underestimate the respect that President Trump has for royal families.”

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Since the document was drafted, Belgium’s King Philippe has flown to the US to attend the football World Cup in July, while Queen Mathilde has accompanied several Belgian ministers to New York for the UN General Assembly this week.

The document outlines a “strategy and operational implementation” on dealing with the US, outlining various risks of officials engaging with the Trump administration, and proposing to focus on joint areas of interest such as drug trafficking.

“Our federal and regional ministers will need to calibrate . . . their presence and actions . . . taking into account the opportunities and risks inherent in these visits,” the foreign ministry said.

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A spokesperson for the foreign ministry said the paper was an “internal working document” and that its contents “should be distinguished from an agreed policy strategy”.

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[–] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/

https://web.archive.org/web/20260310202300/https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/

Even the extremely liberal "The Atlantic" seems to disagree with your mythology.

The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth

The narrative wrongfully portrays both Beijing and the developing countries it deals with.

The notion of “debt-trap diplomacy” casts China as a conniving creditor and countries such as Sri Lanka as its credulous victims. On a closer look, however, the situation is far more complex. China’s march outward, like its domestic development, is probing and experimental, a learning process marked by frequent adjustment. After the construction of the port in Hambantota, for example, Chinese firms and banks learned that strongmen fall and that they’d better have strategies for dealing with political risk. They’re now developing these strategies, getting better at discerning business opportunities and withdrawing where they know they can’t win. Still, American leaders and thinkers from both sides of the aisle give speeches about China’s “modern-day colonialism.”

Over the past 20 years, Chinese firms have learned a lot about how to play in an international construction business that remains dominated by Europe: Whereas China has 27 firms among the top 100 global contractors, up from nine in 2000, Europe has 37, down from 41. The U.S. has seven, compared to 19 two decades ago.

Chinese firms are not the only companies to benefit from Chinese-financed projects. Perhaps no country was more alarmed by Hambantota than India, the regional giant that several times rebuffed Sri Lanka’s appeals for investment, aid, and equity partnerships. Yet an Indian-led business, Meghraj, joined the U.K.-based engineering firm Atkins Limited in an international consortium to write the long-term plan for Hambantota Port and for the development of a new business zone. The French firms Bolloré and CMA-CGM have partnered with China Merchants and China Harbor in port developments in Nigeria, Cameroon, and elsewhere.

The other side of the debt-trap myth involves debtor countries. Places such as Sri Lanka—or, for that matter, Kenya, Zambia, or Malaysia—are no stranger to geopolitical games. And they’re irked by American views that they’ve been so easily swindled. As one Malaysian politician remarked to us, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss how Chinese finance featured in that country’s political drama, “Can’t the U.S. State Department tell the difference between campaign rhetoric that our opponents are slaves to China and actually being slaves to China?”

The events that led to a Chinese company’s acquisition of a majority stake in a Sri Lankan port reveal a great deal about how our world is changing. China and other countries are becoming more sophisticated in bargaining with one another. And it would be a shame if the U.S. fails to learn alongside them.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 child)

    The op-ed mentions not a single number, this is useless. The interest rates for rescue loans from China are more than double the World Bank and IMF’s rates, just to name an example. Literally all of China's so-called 'allies' find themselves being dependent on Beijing's goodwill, all of them ending up selling critical national infrastructure to the Chinese party-state (you own link mentions that even).

    You are just posting misleading tankie headlines and some links. This is waste of time.

    Edit:

    China as an International Lender of Last Resort (pdf)

    China’s rescue loans differ from those of established international lenders of last resort in that they

    • (i) are opaque,
    • (ii) carry relatively high interest rates, and
    • (iii) are almost exclusively targeted to debtors of China's Belt and Road Initiative ....

    ... Another key difference is pricing of the rescue loans and swaps. Figure 6 demonstrates that Chinese rescue lending is extended at relatively high interest rates. The Fed usually charges margins of around 25 basis points over the LIBOR reference rate. In contrast, the PBOC swap lines show interest rates at margins between 200 and 400 basis points above the Shibor reference rate, while the typical rescue loan by Chinese banks requires interest rates of 5 percent.

    These rates are also considerably higher than the average IMF interest rate, which has been around 2 percent for non-concessional lending operations over the past 10 years. Other multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, offer even lower rates for budgetary support. The borrowing terms of Chinese rescue loans, however, are broadly similar to those of past US Treasury bilateral rescue facilities and to those initially charged by Eurozone rescue facilities ...

    The entire report makes a good read, and it is just one among many others. They are all much better than these propaganda slop you are posting around.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    “African countries seem to increasingly prefer loans from China mainly to avoid the very constricting neoliberal conditionality that goes with loans from the IMF,” says Chibuzo Nwoke, professor of international relations and vice chancellor of Oduduwa University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

    It's almost like treating global south countries as partners is preferred to being treated as vassals. IMF loans require a relinquishment of economic sovereignty that is not preferable to the terms China offers. Structural Adjustment Programs are a major issue for these countries, and China does not require such fealty to capital interests.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20260218215732/https://hir.harvard.edu/crippling-conditions-an-exploration-of-imf-loans-in-latin-america/

    Crippling Conditions: The IMF and Global Inequality

    When a country is on the brink of defaulting on its debt or plunging into economic catastrophe, to whom does it turn? Although it can try to get a loan from a regional bank or aid from a large power like the United States, those options often fail. Ultimately, many countries turn to the lender of last resort: the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Dozens of countries every year receive IMF loans after exhausting other options, and as of April 2024, over 90 countries still need to pay the IMF back for the loans they received. Given that countries often lack alternatives and that the IMF is under no contractual obligation to provide a loan to any country, it holds immense power in deciding who gets money and how that money is used.

    After West African countries were forced to follow the IMF’s structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s, spending on education decreased by 25 percent and spending on healthcare decreased by 50 percent. This reduction in important social services spending caused an estimated 500,000 deaths of children in Africa. More broadly, education is a prerequisite for long-term economic growth and a flourishing society. In an uneducated society, people are less able to contribute to the economy and participate politically as informed voters, causing worse policies in the long-term. Without healthy and educated children, these countries often return to the IMF years later when the economy again fails after the initial increase in liquidity gained from cutting social programs. Notably, a study of 81 developing countries from 1986 to 2016 demonstrated that IMF structural reforms attached to loan agreements have trapped more individuals in cycles of poverty. This perpetuation of global inequalities fosters dependency on the IMF.

    The new African aphorism goes: "Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time the West visits, we get a lecture."

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