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A day after US President Donald Trump said he would hit foreign cars and car parts with a new import tax of 25%, many of the world’s biggest automakers appeared stunned into silence, as they took in a move expected to wreak havoc across the industry.

Investors sold off shares of carmakers in Japan, Germany and the UK on Thursday, wiping billions of value off names such as Toyota, BMW and Jaguar Land Rover.

Firms in America were some of the hardest hit, with General Motors down more than 7%.

Shares in Tesla, which is known for its US factories and whose boss Elon Musk is one of Trump’s biggest donors and closest advisers, were notably spared from the hit, ending the day flat.

But Musk warned that even his company would not be immune from the tariff disruption.

“Important to note that Tesla is NOT unscathed here,” Musk wrote on social media. “The cost impact is not trivial.”

Tesla’s Model Y, which topped Cars.com’s 2024 index of American-made cars for the third year running, only sources 70% of its parts from the US, according to Patrick Masterson, lead researcher for the list.

“The major takeaway I think people should know about this is no vehicle is 100% US-made,” he said.

“The consumer is going to feel it across the board and I really don’t think that any automaker is going to be spared from this, Tesla included.”

The latest tariffs could affect roughly $300bn-$400bn in imports, depending on what parts are affected by the order, according to Macquarie. That amounts to almost 10% of everything the US brings into the country each year.

It is expected to push up prices by roughly $4,000 to $12,000, depending on the vehicle.

Many major car companies have operations in the US, while also bringing in models, or parts from outside of the US.

Japan’s Toyota, for example, has 10 manufacturing plants in the US and its Highlander SUV ranks highly on the American-made list.

But its Prius ships in from Japan.

General Motors also brings in significant parts and cars from Korea and Mexico, which Volkswagen also relies on heavily, despite assembling the Atlas SUV in the US.

Some firms may be able to redirect work to factories in the US, Oxford Economics has suggested, but it warned that such a move was likely to lead to higher prices and “significantly lower production in the US’s main trading partners”.

The action is likely to have a more significant impact on carmakers exporting from Germany and the UK, which are known for selling fewer, more premium and luxury brands at higher prices, such as Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

Ferrari, which ships its cars from Italy, immediately announced a 10% price hike, to help cover the new cost of the duty.

As companies are forced to respond to the 25% tariffs, by raising prices or accepting lower profits, some may decide to pull some models out of the US entirely, leading to fewer choices for American consumers, warned Patrick Anderson, chief executive of the Anderson Economic Group.

This could also lead to carmakers without a current large manufacturing presence in the US, such as Jaguar Land Rover or Porsche, reducing production in their home countries, potentially affecting jobs.

All Mitsubishi cars sold in the US are imported, while Hyundai, which announced plans for a plant in the US earlier this week, ships most of its cars from South Korea.

Trump, who started discussing tariffs on cars in his first term, said his latest tariff enforcement would be permanent, claiming it will boost America’s manufacturing base.

It follows previous moves to impose tariffs of at least 20% on goods being imported into the US from China along with 25% levies on some goods from Canada and Mexico.

A 25% import tax on all steel and aluminium entering America is also already in force.

He is also set to introduce so-called reciprocal tariffs against individual countries based on their trade balance with the US.

The White House said the car duties would start on April 3, while tariffs on certain car parts are set to come into effect a month later.

For now, parts made in Mexico and Canada – which have traditionally entered the US under a free trade agreement – will be spared, while officials get custom systems prepared.

The carve-out for parts from Mexico and Canada, which the White House said would be temporary, was a relief to some in the industry.

But General Motors is still facing potential increased costs starting at about $10.5bn, according to JP Morgan.

Ford’s bill would start at roughly $2bn, more than doubling over time as tariffs on parts come into effect, according to estimates from the banking giant.

It said the added cost across the industry would amount to more than $80bn.

Jennifer Safavian, president of Autos Drive America, which represents international carmakers, said her members were still working out the repercussions of the move and other tariffs that have been recently announced or are looming.

But she warned that the measure would lead to higher prices, fewer sales, and less production across the industry.

“They’re trying to digest this,” she said. “But again there’s no question that these tariffs are going to have an impact on the US auto industry.”

A high-powered delegation of US officials will spend Friday at a remote military base on Greenland in what is being viewed as the latest manifestation of American designs on the sparsely populated semi-autonomous Danish territory.

The US group includes Vice-President JD Vance and his wife Usha, White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

The trip marks the latest twist in what has become a tangled diplomatic journey that began with what was originally billed as a private tour by the US second lady.

Usha Vance was only supposed to travel to Greenland with her son to attend cultural events, like a dog-sledding race, and to spend some time visiting the capital of Nuuk.

But the visit quickly attracted scrutiny. While the trip was originally framed as a cultural tour, the scale of the security preparations, including all sorts of security and cars and apparatus, made it clear that this was something bigger. Greenlanders were not having it and were planning protests.

The visit raised eyebrows in light of President Donald Trump’s repeated comments that he would like to annex mineral-rich Greenland, which he says is critical for US security.

Then when it was announced that Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor, would join the delegation visiting the island, the people of Greenland and Denmark appeared to grow uncomfortable. The American visits began to look less like a cultural interaction and more like an effort to meddle in the island’s internal politics by rallying support for closer ties to the US among the local population – at the expense of Danish sovereignty.

Greenland’s Acting Prime Minister Mute B Egede said it was a “provocation” and “demonstration of power”, and asked the international community to step up.

“Just for the record, the government of Greenland has not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official,” Egede said.

Ordinary Greenlanders also made their displeasure known, promising that the American delegation would not receive a warm welcome.

In Sisimiut, where the annual dog race is held, the mayor declined to set up a meeting with the second lady, citing next week’s municipal elections as a reason. A silent protest had been planned too, which would have seen locals turn their back on the American visitors – a potentially publicly awkward situation and poor optics for Mrs Vance.

“The US administration could see they were heading for PR catastrophe,” political analyst Noa Redington said.

“They were heading for a charm offensive without charm,” he said. “With people absolutely not happy to see Usha Vance or any other American politicians.”

A mere two days after Usha Vance’s trip was announced, the cultural itinerary was dropped, replaced by a single visit to a remote US military installation – Pituffik Space Base. And now, Vice-President Vance would be joining his wife.

Waltz was no longer listed on the itinerary, though he was added again later.

“Leaders in both America and in Denmark, I think, ignored Greenland for far too long,” JD Vance said, announcing his visit. “That’s been bad for Greenland. It’s also been bad for the security of the entire world. We think we can take things in a different direction.”

Despite his comments, political leaders in Denmark cautiously welcomed the change of plan, and especially the limiting of the itinerary to just the US base.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said that while the vice-president’s presence may increase the formality of the visit, it was actually “masterful spin” which made the US “look like they’re escalating when they’re actually deescalating.”

“I actually think it is very positive that the Americans are cancelling their visit to the Greenlandic community. Then they will instead make a visit to their own base, Pituffik, and we have nothing against that,” he said.

Vance is the highest-ranking US official to ever visit Greenland and while the limited scope of the trip has pleased Denmark, the fact that he is going at all underscores the high level of interest the Trump administration has in the island.

The US president himself has continued to reiterate his desire to acquire Greenland for national security reasons, saying on Wednesday that the US will “go as far as we have to go” to accomplish that goal.

According to Michael Williams, a professor of international politics at the University of Ottawa, Trump’s focus on Greenland appears to reflect a larger international strategy that involves exerting US influence over key territories within its sphere of geographic influence.

Canada and Greenland, both early targets of interest for the administration, occupy key Arctic waterways that are being contested by other global powers, like Russia and China.

Recent US moves could be viewed as an attempt to gain the upper hand in these strategic North Americans regions.

“You want to amp up the American presence in the north and its control over those northern reaches,” Williams said.

“If you can do that, then you can actually potentially control those northern waters in a much, much more direct way than has ever been necessary before.”

Five people have been injured following a stabbing near the central Dam Square in Amsterdam, police say.

The injured include two Americans, a Polish man, a Belgian woman and a Dutch woman. The youngest is 19 and the oldest 73, police add.

The male suspect, who has been arrested, was overpowered with the help of bystanders and taken to hospital with a leg injury.

Police say the motive behind the attack is “under investigation” but they are considering the possibility that the suspect may have chosen people at random.

The Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema said a police investigation was “in full swing” and authorities hoped to uncover more details of what happened soon.

“Our hearts go out to the victims, their families, and loved ones,” she said.

The wounded people are a 67-year-old woman and a 69-year-old man, both from the US; a 26-year-old man from Poland; a 73-year-old woman from Belgium; and a 19-year-old woman from Amsterdam.

Police said just before 15:30 local time (14:30 GMT) emergency services received several reports of a stabbing incident.

Officers then quickly arrived at the scene and found five injured people at various locations in and around Sint Nicolaasstraat in the centre of the city, police said.

With the help of bystanders, officers apprehended a suspect shortly after the incident, police said.

Authorities cordoned-off a large area around the Royal Palace in the central Dam Square, where an emergency helicopter landed.

The square is popular with tourists lying at the heart of the historic district of the city.

One witness told the Dutch paper De Telegraaf that they suddenly heard an “icy scream” and after that panic broke out in the area.

A shop assistant also said that she heard a lot of shouting and screaming and that people started running, the paper reported.

Amsterdam outlet Het Parool quoted a witness saying he approached a girl after hearing a noise. As someone else shouted to call an ambulance, he saw a knife “sticking out from the girl’s back, between her shoulders”.

The police are urging anyone with images of the incident to upload them as evidence.

The number of injured people was for a time said to be four, but in a later update the police said five people were wounded as well as the suspect.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada’s old relationship with the United States, “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over”.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa after a cabinet meeting, Carney said Canadians must “fundamentally reimagine our economy” in the face of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

He said Canada would respond with retaliatory tariffs that will have “maximum impact” on the US.

Trump announced on Wednesday he would target imported vehicles and vehicle parts with a 25% tax, stating: “This is permanent.”

Carney, the Liberal Party leader, called the original Canada-US Automotive Products Agreement signed in 1965 the most important deal in his lifetime.

“That’s finished with these tariffs,” he said in French.

He continued that Canada can sustain an auto industry with the US tariffs provided the government and business community work to “reimagine” and “retool” the industry.

Canada needs to build an economy Canadians can control, he said, and that would include rethinking it’s trade relationship with other partners.

It remains to be seen whether Canadians can have a strong trading relationship with the United States going forward, he added.

Carney has switched his campaign plans ahead of next month’s general election to confront the latest import duties.

The US has already partially imposed a blanket 25% tariff on Canadian goods, along with a 25% duty on all aluminium and steel imports. Canada has so far retaliated with about C$60bn ($42bn; £32bn) of tariffs on US goods.

The new car tariffs will come into effect on 2 April, with charges on businesses importing vehicles starting the next day, the White House said. Taxes on parts are set to start in May or later.

Early on Thursday morning, Trump warned Canada and the EU against joining forces versus the US in the trade war.

“If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

Carney met his ministers in Ottawa on Thursday morning to “discuss trade options”. He had originally been scheduled to campaign in Quebec.

He said during his press conference that President Trump had reached out to him last night to schedule a call, and that it would take place in the “next day or two”.

If it takes place, this would be the first call between the pair.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservatives, the main opposition party, called the tariffs “unjustified and unprovoked”.

The NDP, a left-wing party that previously helped prop up the minority Liberal government of ex-PM Justin Trudeau, also switched its campaign plans on Thursday.

Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, spent the day meeting union leaders and car workers in Windsor, Ontario, an auto manufacturing hub across from Detroit, Michigan.

He said the US tariffs are a “betrayal” against a close ally, saying that “Donald Trump has started an illegal trade war with Canada” for “absolutely no reason”.

He said any auto company that moves their operations out of Canada because of the tariffs should be blocked from selling cars in the country.

Canadians go to the polls on 28 April.

The US imported about eight million cars last year – accounting for about $240bn in trade and roughly half of overall sales.

Earlier this month, after he became Liberal leader and before he was sworn in as prime minister, Carney gave a victory speech in which he lambasted the US president.

“A person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him,” he said, while assailing his main rival, Poilievre.

Mexico is the top supplier of cars to the US, followed by South Korea, Japan, Canada and Germany.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, in a news conference on Thursday morning, declined to comment directly on the new auto tariffs.

She vowed her government would “always defend Mexico”, and fight to maintain job creation and protect Mexican companies affected by import taxes.

She said Mexico would provide an “integral response” to the Trump administration’s tariffs on 3 April, the day after many are due to come into effect.

Sheinbaum has repeatedly noted that many US car companies have operations in both Mexico and Canada, which are bound by a North American free trade agreement that Trump himself negotiated during his first term in the White House.

“Of course, there shouldn’t be tariffs,” she said on Thursday. “That’s the essence of the free trade agreement.”

At least 24 people have been killed as multiple wildfires continue to ravage South Korea’s south-east region.

Most of the victims are in their 60s and 70s, say authorities, adding that some 26 people are injured – with 12 in critical condition – as the deadly wildfires have forced more than 23,000 people to flee their homes.

The “unprecedented” crisis remains critical and is “rewriting the record books for the worst wildfires in our nation’s history”, said acting president Han Duck-soo.

The fires gutted the 1,300-year-old Gounsa temple in Uiseong city, where many cultural relics were removed and transported to safer ground.

The fires started in Sancheong county on Friday afternoon and later spread to Uiseong county, authorities said.

Fuelled by strong and dry winds, the fires are advancing to the neighbouring counties of Andong, Cheongsong, Yeongyang and Yeongdeok, Yonhap news agency reported.

The Uiseong blaze is spreading at an “unimaginable” scale and speed, Lee Byung-doo, a forest disaster expert at the National Institute of Forest Science, told Reuters.

A firefighting helicopter crashed in the mountains of Uiseong county just after midday on Wednesday, according to authorities, who are investigating the cause.

Thousands of firefighters and about 5,000 military personnel have been deployed to contain multiple blazes, as well as helicopters from the US military stationed in Korea.

On Tuesday, the national fire agency said it had raised the crisis to the highest fire response level, the first time this year such an alert has been issued.

Wildfires are relatively uncommon in South Korea, and related fatalities are rare. The current fires, which have killed 18 people within the past few days, are already the deadliest in the country’s history.

About 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of forest have also been destroyed, making the fires the third largest in South Korea’s history in terms of area.

The blazes raging in the city of Uiseong burned down the Gounsa temple, built in 618 AD, which was one of the largest temples in the province.

A Buddhist architectural structure deemed a national treasure from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) was also destroyed, forestry authorities confirmed.

A 68-year-old monk said he was “devastated” when he heard that about the destruction of the Gounsa temple.

“We will do our best to restore the function of the temple.”

“It was an extremely painful feeling, and I wondered why something like this could happen,” Joung-ou told news agency AFP.

In Andong, truck driver Lee Seung-joo said he saw the mountains burn like “literal hell” as he drove by.

“It was like the apocalypse,” the 39-year-old said, according to an AFP report.

Elsewewhere in Andong, evacuees who were sheltering at an elementary school were told to leave quickly as the fire was spread by gusty winds.

“The wind was so strong,” said 79-year-old Kwon So-han told AFP. “The fire came from the mountain and fell on my house.”

Acting president Han said all available personnel and equipment have been deployed, but strong winds continue to hamper the support efforts.

“We were desperately hoping for rain today or tomorrow to help extinguish the flames,” Han added.

“This level of wildfire damage is unlike anything we’ve experienced before.”

There was no rain forecast for the region on Wednesday and only a small amount – five to 10mm – expected on Thursday, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.

Han said the government will thoroughly review all shortcomings in the wildfire response once the crisis is controlled and seek to improve prevention strategies for the future.

“Once a wildfire starts, extinguishing it requires tremendous resources and puts precious lives in danger,” he said.

South Korea has been experiencing drier than normal conditions with less rainfall than average. There have already been 244 wildfires this year – 2.4 times more than the same period last year.

The government also promised to strengthen enforcement against illegal burning -one of the main causes of wildfires – and crack down on individual carelessness.

US President Donald Trump and his intelligence chiefs have played down a security breach that saw a journalist invited into a Signal group chat where he reported seeing national security officials plan airstrikes in Yemen.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe denied at a Senate hearing that any classified information was shared in the message chain. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth also faced scrutiny for the messages, though he did not testify.

Democrats on the panel rebuked the cabinet members as “incompetent” with national security.

Over at the White House, Trump stood by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who was at the centre of the leak.

Waltz came close to apologising by Tuesday evening, telling Fox News: “I take full responsibility. I built the group.”

“It’s embarrassing. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

Asked if he had identified who on his staff was at fault, he responded, “a staffer wasn’t responsible,” and repeated that the error was his “full responsibility”.

Waltz also said that he had spoken to Elon Musk, who is leading the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency and has touted himself as “tech support” for the federal government.

“We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened,” Waltz continued, adding that Goldberg “wasn’t on my phone”.

The revelation has sent shockwaves through Washington, prompting a lawsuit and questions about why high-ranking officials discussed such sensitive matters on a potentially vulnerable civilian app.

Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the 18-member group, apparently by accident, and reported that he initially thought it was a hoax.

But he said he realised the messages were authentic once the planned raid was carried out in Yemen.

Some 53 people were killed in the 15 March airstrikes, which US officials said targeted Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who have threatened maritime trade and Israel.

The American raids have continued since then, including early on Tuesday morning.

In addition to Ratcliffe and Gabbard, the Signal group chat included Vice-President JD Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

The controversy overshadowed Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was originally meant to focus on drug cartels and people trafficking.

During the at-times combative session, Ratcliffe said he was not aware of any specific operational information on weapons, targets or timings discussed in the chat, as Goldberg had reported.

Asked if he believed the leak was a huge mistake, Ratcliffe said: “No.”

Gabbard repeatedly said “no classified information” was divulged and maintained there was a difference between “inadvertent release” and “malicious leaks” of information.

Both pointed to Hegseth as being the authority on whether the information was classified. Goldberg reported that much of the most sensitive information shared in the chat came from the account under Hegseth’s name.

“The Secretary of Defense is the original classification authority for DoD in deciding what would be classified information,” Ratcliffe said.

Senate Democrats assailed the Gabbard and Ratcliffe.

Colorado’s Michael Bennet accused those involved in the chat of sloppiness, incompetence and disrespect for US intelligence agencies.

Georgia’s Jon Ossoff described the episode – which Washington has dubbed Signalgate – as an “embarrassment”.

“This is utterly unprofessional. There’s been no apology,” Ossoff said. “There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error.”

Republicans on the panel were far more muted in their misgivings.

“We dodged a bullet,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker, who leads the Senate’s armed services committee, later told reporters that lawmakers will investigate the Signal chat leak.

Wicker told reporters that he wants the investigation to be bipartisan and for the committee to have full access to the group chat’s transcript.

“We need to find out if it’s completely factual, and then make recommendations,” he told the NewsNation network. “But I expect we’ll have the co-operation of the administration.”

Republican Jim Risch of Idaho, who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also said that he expects the matter to be investigated.

“This is a matter that’s going to be investigated, obviously, we’re going to know a lot more about it as the facts role out,” he said, quoted by The Hill newspaper.

Trump and his White House team cast the controversy as a “co-ordinated effort” to distract from the president’s accomplishments.

Throughout the day, Trump played down the leak and defended his national security adviser who was reported to have admitted Goldberg to the group chat.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC in a morning phone interview. He also said Goldberg’s addition to the group was a “glitch” that had “no impact at all” operationally.

The Republican president indicated it was one of Waltz’s aides who had invited the journalist to the chat.

“A staffer had his number on there,” said Trump, who has long pilloried reporting by Goldberg going back to the 2020 election.

At an event later at the White House, Trump was joined by Waltz.

“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” said the president. “They used an app, if you want to call it an app, that a lot of people use, a lot of people in government use, a lot of people in the media use.”

In his own brief remarks, Waltz took aim at Goldberg. He said he had never had any contact with the reporter and accused him of wanting to focus on “more hoaxes”, rather than Trump administration successes.

Trump later spoke to Newsmax, where he told the conservative network that “somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that was with Mike Waltz, worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had, I guess Goldberg’s” phone number.

Some national security experts have argued that the leak was a major operational lapse, and archive experts warned that it violated laws on presidential record keeping.

On Tuesday, the non-partisan watchdog group American Oversight sued the individual officials who participated in the chat for alleged violations of the Federal Records Act and Administrative Procedure Act.

The group said that by setting the chat to automatically delete messages, the group violated a law requiring White House officials to submit their records to the National Archives.

The National Security Agency warned employees only last month of vulnerabilities in Signal, according to documents obtained by the BBC’s US partner CBS.

Signal issued a new statement on Tuesday disputing “vulnerabilities” in its messaging platform.

“Signal is open source, so our code is regularly scrutinized in addition to regular formal audits,” the statement said, calling the app “the gold standard for private, secure communications”.

Mick Mulroy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence (DASD) for the Middle East and a retired CIA paramilitary officer, told the BBC that holding sensitive discussions on a “unsure commercial application” was “unacceptable”.

“And everyone on that chat knew it,” he added. “You do not need to be a member of the military or intelligence community to know that this information is exactly what the enemy would want to know.”

This is the gravest crisis for Western security since the end of World War Two, and a lasting one. As one expert puts it, “Trumpism will outlast his presidency”. But which nations are equipped to step to the fore as the US stands back?

At 09.00 one morning in February 1947, the UK ambassador in Washington, Lord Inverchapel, walked into the State Department to hand the US Secretary of State, George Marshall, two diplomatic messages printed on blue paper to emphasise their importance: one on Greece, the other on Turkey.

Exhausted, broke and heavily in debt to the United States, Britain told the US that it could no longer continue its support for the Greek government forces that were fighting an armed Communist insurgency. Britain had already announced plans to pull out of Palestine and India and to wind down its presence in Egypt.

The United States saw immediately that there was now a real danger that Greece would fall to the Communists and, by extension, to Soviet control. And if Greece went, the United States feared that Turkey could be next, giving Moscow control of the Eastern Mediterranean including, potentially, the Suez Canal, a vital global trade route.

Almost overnight, the United States stepped into the vacuum left by the departing British.

“It must be a policy of the United States,” President Harry Truman announced, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.”

It was the start of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. At its heart was the idea that helping to defend democracy abroad was vital to the United States’ national interests.

There followed two major US initiatives: the Marshall Plan, a massive package of assistance to rebuild the shattered economies of Europe, and the creation of Nato in 1949, which was designed to defend democracies from a Soviet Union that had now extended its control over the eastern part of Europe.

It is easy to see this as the moment that leadership of the western world passed from Britain to the United States. More accurately it is the moment that revealed that it already had.

The United States, traditionally isolationist and safely sheltered by two vast oceans, had emerged from World War Two as the leader of the free world. As America projected its power around the globe, it spent the post-war decades remaking much of the world in its own image.

The baby boomer generation grew up in a world that looked, sounded and behaved more like the United States than ever before. And it became the western world’s cultural, economic and military hegemon.

Yet the fundamental assumptions on which the United States has based its geostrategic ambitions now look set to change.

Donald Trump is the first US President since World War Two to challenge the role that his country set for itself many decades ago. And he is doing this in such a way that, to many, the old world order appears to be over – and the new world order has yet to take shape.

The question is, which nations will step forward? And, with the security of Europe under greater strain than at any time almost in living memory, can its leaders, who are currently scrabbling around, find an adequate response?

President Trump’s critique of the post-1945 international order dates back decades. Nearly 40 years ago he took out full-page advertisements in three US newspapers to criticise the United States’ commitment to the defence of the world’s democracies.

“For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States,” he wrote in 1987. “Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?

“The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

It’s a position he has repeated since his second inauguration.

And the fury felt by some in his administration for what they perceive as European reliance on the United States was apparently shown in the leaked messages about air strikes on Houthis in Yemen that emerged this week.

In the messages, an account named Vice-President JD Vance wrote that European countries might benefit from the strikes. It said: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Another account, identified as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

Trump’s own position appears to go beyond criticising those he says are taking advantage of the United State’s generosity. At the start of his second presidency, he seemed to embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Russia that Ukraine would not be granted Nato membership and that it should not expect to get back the territory it has lost to Russia.

Many saw this as giving away two major bargaining chips before talks had even started. He apparently asked Russia for nothing in return.

On the flipside, certain Trump supporters see in Putin a strong leader who embodies many of the conservative values they themselves share.

To some, Putin is an ally in a “war on woke”.

The United States’ foreign policy is now driven, in part at least, by the imperatives of its culture wars. The security of Europe has become entangled in the battle between two polarised and mutually antagonistic visions of what the United States stands for.

Some think the division is about more than Trump’s particular views and that Europe can not just sit tight waiting for his term in office to end.

“The US is becoming divorced from European values,” argues Ed Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London. “That’s difficult [for Europeans] to swallow because it means that it’s structural, cultural and potentially long-term. “

“I think the current trajectory of the US will outlast Trump, as a person. I think Trumpism will outlast his presidency.”

The Trump White House has said it will no longer be the primary guarantor of European security, and that European nations should be responsible for their own defence and pay for it.

“If [Nato countries] don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them. No, I’m not going to defend them,” the president said earlier this month.

For almost 80 years, the cornerstone of European security has been embedded in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one member state of the alliance is an attack on all.

In Downing Street last month, just before his visit to the White House, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told me during an interview that he was satisfied that the United States remained the leading member of Nato and that Trump personally remained committed to Article 5.

Others are less sure.

Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary in the last Conservative government, told me earlier this month: “I think Article 5 is on life support.

“If Europe, including the United Kingdom, doesn’t step up to the plate, invest a lot on defence and take it seriously, it’s potentially the end of the Nato that we know and it’ll be the end of Article 5.

“Right now, I wouldn’t bet my house that Article 5 would be able to be triggered in the event of a Russian attack… I certainly wouldn’t take for granted that the United States would ride to the rescue.”

According to polling by the French company Institut Elabe, nearly three quarters of French people now think that the United States is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavourable views of the United States as well.

“The damage Trump has done to Nato is probably irreparable,” argues Robert Kagan, a conservative commentator, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC who has been a long time critic of Trump.

“The alliance relied on an American guarantee that is no longer reliable, to say the least”.

And yet Trump is by no means the first US president to tell Europe to get its defence spending in order. In 2016 Barack Obama urged Nato allies to increase theirs, saying: “Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence.”

All of this is great news for Putin. “The entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes,” he said last year. “Europe is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into the chaos of challenges such as migration, and losing international agency and cultural identity.”

In early March, three days after Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with Trump and Vance in the White House, a Kremlin spokesman declared “the fragmentation of the West has begun”.

“Look at Russia’s objectives in Europe,” says Armida van Rij, head of the Europe programme at Chatham House. “Its objectives are to destabilise Europe. It is to weaken Nato, and get the Americans to withdraw their troops from here.

“And at the moment you could go ‘tick, tick and almost tick’. Because it is destabilising Europe. It is weakening Nato. It hasn’t gone as far as to get the US to withdraw troops from Europe, but in a few months time, who knows where we’ll be?”

One of the great challenges Europe, in particular, faces from here is the question of how to arm itself adequately. Eighty years of reliance on the might of the United States has left many European democracies exposed.

Britain, for example, has cut military spending by nearly 70% since the height of the Cold War. (At the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s, Europe allowed itself a peace dividend and began a decades-long process of reducing defence spending.)

“We had a big budget [during the Cold War] and we took a peace dividend,” says Wallace. “Now, you could argue that that was warranted.

“The problem is we went from a peace dividend to corporate raiding. [Defence] just became the go-to department to take money from. And that is where we just forgot the lessons of our history.”

The prime minister told parliament last month that Britain would increase defence spending from 2.3% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027. But is that enough?

“It is enough just to stand still,” argues Wallace. “It wouldn’t be enough to fix the things we need to make ourselves more deployable, and to plug the gaps if the Americans left.”

Then there is the wider question of military recruitment. “The West is in freefall in its military recruiting, it’s not just Britain,” argues Wallace.

“At the moment, young people aren’t joining the military. And that’s a problem.”

But Germany’s new Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has said Europe must make itself independent of the United States. And “Europeanising” NATO will require the build up of an indigenous European military-industrial complex capable of delivering capabilities that currently only the United States has.

Others share the view that Europe must become more self reliant militarily – but some are concerned that not all of Europe is on board with this.

“Where we are at the moment is that the East Europeans by and large, don’t need to get the memo,” says Ian Bond, deputy director, Centre for European Reform. “The further west you go, the more problematic it becomes until you get to Spain and Italy.”

Mr Arnold agrees: “The view in Europe now is this isn’t really a debate anymore, it’s a debate of how we do it and maybe how quickly we do it, but we need to do this now.”

There is a short list of “very important things” that only the United States currently provides, according to historian Timothy Garton Ash.

“These are the so-called strategic enablers,” he says. “The satellites, the intelligence, the Patriot air defence batteries, which are the only ones that can take down Russian ballistic missiles. And within three to five years we [countries other than the US] should aim to have our own version of these.

“And in this process of transition, from the American-led Nato [the idea is] you will have a Nato that is so Europeanised that its forces, together with national forces and EU capacities, are capable of defending Europe – even if an American president says ‘leave us out of this’.”

The question is how to achieve this.

Ms van Rij stresses that, in her view, Europe does need to build a Europe-owned European defence industrial base – but she foresees difficulties.

“What’s really difficult are the divisions within Europe on how to actually do this and whether to actually do this.”

The European Commission and experts have been trying to figure out how this defence may work for several decades. “It has traditionally been very difficult because of vested national interests… So this is not going to be easy.”

In the meantime, Trump appears ready to turn the page on the post-Cold War rules-based international order of sovereign states that are free to choose their own destinies and alliances.

What he seems to share with Vladimir Putin is a desire for a world in which the major powers, unconstrained by internationally agreed laws, are free to impose their will on smaller, weaker nations, as Russia has traditionally done in both its Tsarist and Soviet Empires. That would mean a return to the “spheres of interest” system that prevailed for forty years after the Second World War.

We don’t know exactly what Donald Trump would do were a Nato country to be attacked. But the point is that the guarantee of US help can no longer be taken for granted. That means Europe has to react. Its challenge appears to be to stay united, finally make good on funding its own defence, and avoid being drawn into the “sphere of influence” of any of the big powers.

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