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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

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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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[–] 4 points 4 days ago

https://gga.org/china-vs-the-imf/

Experts say that the shift is largely due to China’s funding model, which provides multi-billion dollar credits at more flexible terms, even to countries otherwise restricted from big money by the IMF. “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. For years the IMF prevented low-income countries from taking up non-concessional, large-size commercial loans. And as other Western lenders often rely on the international financial organisation’s assessment of countries’ macroeconomic policies and readiness for reforms, African countries are increasingly looking elsewhere for finance.

The IMF’s required reforms included open markets, scrapping government subsidies, deregulating key sectors, privatisation and debt management. For the IMF, low-income countries must seek debt relief before they look for new loans, and countries must abide by a debt limit framework to benefit from debt relief.

Martin Uhomoibhi, president of the Pan African Institute for Global Affairs and Strategy in Abuja, says that the “so-called Washington Consensus or IMF ‘prescriptions’”, were perhaps the greatest factor that undermined Africa’s take-off in the early 1980s. In Nigeria, for example, “the harshly iniquitous IMF conditions undermined industrialisation projects, unrealistically devalued the national currency and halted growth”, he wrote in a 2016 analysis in Africa Policy Review. The Chinese lending model in Africa, on the other hand, allows low-income countries to access large-size loans for infrastructure if reimbursement can be guaranteed by lucrative commercial projects such as oil or mines, or export revenues. The infrastructure is then developed as long as the commercial project remains profitable. Experts call it a “mixed-funding” model.

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