Trump’s position to swiftly end the war does not come as a surprise. He has said on multiple occasions during his campaign trail that it would be one of his top priorities if reelected. However, despite Trump’s ambiguity and unspecificity on how he would end the conflict, the international community has drawn on statements from the former President to infer how the war will end if his administration takes office: the United States will simply stop funding the Ukrainian War effort. 

Trump’s conservative view on foreign aid toward Ukraine has been expressed numerous times to both the general public and world leaders. In March of this year, when Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Orban sat down with ABC News and said that he was assured that Trump would not give Ukraine “a penny” if elected. 

Following the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine has become one of the top recipients of US foreign aid, something not seen in Europe since the Harry Truman administration created the Marshall Plan after World War II. Sitting at 41%, the United States is the second largest contributor to Ukraine’s foreign aid behind the European Union. Foreign aid has largely been allocated toward military operations, law enforcement, communication departments and humanitarian efforts. 

Yet, even under the Biden Administration, it has been increasingly difficult in recent months for the United States to get bi-partisan support for funding efforts towards Ukraine. Much of foreign security discourse has shifted to the Israel-Hamas war, and Ukraine is not getting the media coverage that it once relied on for international support. Additionally, domestic chaos has fostered turbulence in Congress, with bi-partisan negotiations taking months. In Dec 2023, Zelensky’s appeal to Congress for funding was unsuccessful, as many GOP members cited domestic security issues like illegal immigration as a bigger priority. The shift of the Republican Party becoming increasingly neo-isolationist has created additional struggles for the Biden administration in terms of foreign policy, as many senators have said that their support remains contingent on stricter immigration policies along the Mexican border. 

On Tuesday, Apr 23, the foreign aid package that took months of deliberation finally passed through Congress, allocating $60.8 billion for the Ukrainian War effort. The majority of House Republicans opposed the effort, but the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, managed to structure the bill in ways that separated large groups of opposition, preventing a congressional gridlock. However, despite this win for Congress and the Biden Administration to uphold their support for the war effort, Ukraine said that the delay in US aid has already had a direct impact on the ground. Hal Brands, a US foreign policy expert and a professor of global affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said recently in an interview with The Hub that “the cost of this delay can be measured in Ukrainian lives and territory lost”. He cites that these losses, including the loss of the influential fortress city, Avdiivka, are a direct result of the dire need for artillery ammunition, which US aid helps to supply. 

Recognizing the US’ fundamental contribution to the war effort, for months now US allies in Europe have been trying to “Trump-proof” the conflict’s security, fearing the implications of Trump’s potential return to office. The two nuclear powers of Europe, the UK and France, can hardly compare to the US military arsenal, as they are but a small fraction of the size and have failed in test launches. 

Reflecting on this threatening potential reality, Norbert Röttgen, a veteran German lawmaker and ex-chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, commented it would mark a big change for Europe.  

“Europe would have to stand up for its own security in an unprecedented way,” Röttgen said. 

Similarly, Valérie Hayer, who leads the Renew Europe group, and is French President Emmanuel Macron’s top lawmaker in Brussels, claims now is the perfect opportunity for Europe to start becoming more independent. 

“Europe has relied on the U.S. to provide its security for too long,” Hayer said.  “It’s high time for Europe to improve its own deterrence capacities and take its security into its own hands.” 

Restructuring trans-Atlantic relations would include multiple components, but the overarching theme centers around diverting economic reliance. Europe must look to other regional and global partners to ensure stability. This effort has already been seen in the geopolitically chaotic, yet productive, move to wean off of Russian oil exports.

Trump has said on multiple occasions, both in interviews and on his Truth social network, that the 2021 Russian invasion of Ukraine would never have happened if he had been in office. He even claimed that he delayed the invasion for years, citing his close-knit relationship and ability to influence Putin. However, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has claimed that it would not make a difference if Trump was in power, because the mutual trust between the United States and Russia was tarnished when President George W. Bush Jr. pulled the United States out of the anti-ballistic missile treaties, which many international relations scholars believe escalated a new arms race in the Post-Cold war era. Nevertheless, Trump has continued to double down on his claims on his ability to influence Russian foreign policy. 

Since the Marshall Plan, a bilateral transatlantic security relationship has been fostered between the U.S. and most of Western Europe, materialized in NATO. However, Trump has been a vocal critic of NATO for years, claiming that other states have been freeriding on the US economic and security contributions to the organization. In fact, foreign policy expert and widely-regarded author Anne Applebaum believes that there is a considerable chance that Trump would pull the U.S. out of NATO entirely. 

However, regardless of his win in the election in November, it is clear that an emerging fundamental shift in transatlantic security relations seems imminent. As the war continues on to its third year, US foreign aid is a rising contentious topic among Americans, and Europe will have to adjust accordingly.

With housing prices continuing to climb, fewer people can and will have access to affordable housing. This spurs a snowball effect—forcing individuals to be evicted or unable to become homeowners in the first place. The latest update at the end of 2022 has shown that more than 1.8 billion people do not have a permanent home. The United States is short of 6.5 million homes that are necessary to solve its homelessness crisis. In comparison, the United Kingdom needs 4.3 million homes to recoup the backlog of people living in public housing facilities.

There are multiple variables that affect the fluctuation of prices of the housing markets in the United Kingdom, United States and Europe. However, the most critical factor is the demand for homes on the market today. With there being a surplus of buyers and shortage of houses, this triggers house prices to become and remain high. However, this fact is much more complex than it appears. It is a toxic combination of high mortgages, high interest rates, shortage of skillful construction workers, and in some cases, poor investment decisions. High housing prices have been evident since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now future homeowners are facing a taxing increase in the popular 30-year fixed or amortized mortgage rate, which sits at 8% – the highest in decades.

Sheila Bair, who served as a federal regulator in the mid-2000’s during the 2008 housing crisis, claims that current housing prices seem to be “bubbly,”as the rise in prices reaches unsustainable levels. A housing bubble occurs when prices of homes reach unsustainable (high) levels,  often caused due to speculative buying. This buying frenzy, or irrational buying habit of homeowners, leads to a surge in prices that increases the chance of owners defaulting on their mortgages. Which is when homeowners are unable to pay their monthly house payments. When the bubble has “popped,”  housing prices drop to a point where many people owe more to their home than what it is actually worth. Bair is confident that although housing prices need to be corrected downward, it will not happen anytime soon. The shortage of homes will likely keep housing prices at their current price or potentially higher for the next 10 years.

In China, however, compared to the United States and Europe, it is somewhat of the opposite. Its largest property developer, Country Garden, is undergoing difficult times as they have difficulty selling their housing to investors and homebuyers. Years of overbuilding in China’s rural cities such as Shaoguan, have caused an oversupply of homes that Country Garden is unable to sell. Involved in 3000 property projects, the company faces approximately $186 billion USD in liabilities, most of which are due in one to two years. As news unfolded that the company was having trouble repaying its debt, people started to lose confidence in viewing houses as a safe investment. Chinese authorities are now attempting to boost housing sales by making it easier for people to buy homes, including first-time homeowners, and lowering down payment ratios. This may be a concern to real estate professionals as it shows a repeat of what first triggered the 2008 financial crisis in the United States. With growing fears about China’s troubled real estate market, this is a significant concern as foreign investments from East Asia, Southeast Asia and the United States may face the repercussions and losses if China’s real estate market continues to go downhill. While we might see a slowdown in the housing market, analysts and professionals suggest no housing crash in the next 10 years. Instead, a potential rise in prices is what we are expecting to see. As economic uncertainty and troubled assets are a concern for the health of the global economy, the solution to this housing crisis is ambiguous. Whether we should soften interest rates and down payments for homes in China or rely on Gen Z workers to develop construction skills in the United States and the United Kingdom, the future remains unpredictable.