New U.S. leader draws range of world reactions

MEXICO CITY -- There was dismay in Britain, applause in Russia and silence in Japan. French populists found hope, Mexican leaders expressed concern and Germany's vice chancellor offered an allusion to his country's dark past.








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In his first speech as president of the United States, Donald Trump vowed to place America first. And his threat to upend long-standing alliances, trade deals and many other tenets the nation has chosen for nearly 70 years was received across the globe with fear, silence and glee, sometimes within the same country.

In searching for a historical analogy, some in Britain reached back to the 1930s, when a bleaker vision of the world prevailed with the United States on the sidelines. China imposed unusually tight state control over coverage of the inaugural, though state media outlets highlighted protests in the United States. In the Philippines, nationalists set fire to an effigy of Trump, while the country's president welcomed his U.S. counterpart's apparent willingness to stop telling other leaders how to govern.

In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May said she would tell a skeptical Trump how important NATO and the European Union are for European and world stability. "With the threats we face, it's not the time for less cooperation," May, who is supposed to travel to Washington soon, told The Financial Times.

[TRUMP: inauguration, photos, videos and more]

Nationalist movements embraced Trump's words as a validation. The far-right French politician Marine Le Pen, a serious candidate in presidential elections this spring, declared that Trump's victory had opened "a new era in the cooperation between nations."

The mixed reaction reflected the global uncertainty about what a Trump presidency would look like -- and the divided world into which he steps. A fractured landscape of self-interest -- whether from rising nationalist movements in many European countries, an emboldened Russia or long-standing allies such as Britain or Japan -- underscored the confused, and often contradictory, responses.

In Germany, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned of a "drastic radicalization" in U.S. politics, and said Berlin stood ready to fill the void left by an isolationist Washington.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany would approach relations with Washington through the traditional channels of existing international agreements, including the Group of 20, which Germany will host this year. "Even when there are differing opinions, possibilities and compromise are always best found through respectful exchange with one another," she said.

President Francois Hollande of France did not wait for Trump to give his address before offering his take.

"We are in an open world economy, and it is not possible nor advisable to want to be isolated from the world economy," he said.

In France, Le Pen, the National Front leader, lauded the British vote to leave the European Union and Trump's victory. "In 2016, the Anglo-Saxon world woke up," she said. "In 2017, I am sure it will be the year of peoples across the continent rising up!"

Le Pen was to join other far-right leaders from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands in the German city of Koblenz on Saturday, just a day after Trump's inauguration, at a conference to consult and celebrate what they consider a popular shift in their direction.

From Mexico, responses were mixed. President Enrique Pena Nieto, who plans to deliver his own address on foreign policy Monday wrote on Twitter, after a congratulatory note, "Sovereignty, national interest and the protection of Mexicans will guide our relationship with the new government of the United States."

And a member of the Nieto's governing party, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, said in a speech after Trump's inaugural address that "a weak and offended neighbor is not a good ally."

In Russia, Trump's inauguration received blanket coverage on state media with Rossiya 24, a round-the-clock television news channel, broadcasting the entire ceremony and his address live, along with scenes of anti-Trump demonstrators smashing shop windows in Washington. In Moscow, a chain of stores selling Russian military gear offered a one-day, 10 percent discount Friday to all U.S. citizens and embassy workers.

In Hungary, about 100 Trump supporters gathered around a statue of President Ronald Reagan in Budapest's Freedom Square for a "Better World Order Inauguration Party." The country's prime minister, Viktor Orban, eagerly congratulated the new president on his victory.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who was the first world leader to meet with Trump after his election in November, said nothing publicly after Trump's speech. But in a congratulatory message to Trump after the inauguration, Japanese media outlets reported, he called Japan's alliance with the United States an "axis of Japan's foreign and security policies," even though Trump was vocal as a candidate in attacking Japanese trade practices and questioning U.S. military support for the country.

In China, which also offered no public response, the silence was notable for another reason.

China Digital Times, a U.S.-based website that tracks Chinese media and reports regularly on leaked orders from China's propaganda apparatus, published a directive that forbade the country's online news organizations to run photos of the inauguration or include it among their top five news stories of the day.

In Japan, Goro Hashimoto, a special editor at the right-leaning Yomiuri Shimbun, the world's largest-circulation newspaper, compared Trump's speech to President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address -- and not favorably.

"When I heard Kennedy's speech when I was a child, I was so excited," Hashimoto said. "He talked about American values as well as the benefits for the world. Trump didn't talk in that way."

The shift in policy left some determined to forge a path without the United States as the leader.

"We can't sit around & hope for US support & cooperation," the former Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, wrote on Twitter. "Europe must take its destiny & security in its own hands."

Information for this article was contributed by Rick Lyman of The New York Times.

A Section on 01/22/2017

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