From the outside it may seem that the U.S. still sets the world's agenda and the rest of the world merely reacts. But if you look at how people in Brazil, India and the French-speaking world are writing and debating the U.S. in June 2026, a very different picture emerges. America here is not an abstract "hegemon" but a very concrete set of decisions: tariffs against Brazil, war with Iran, attempts to reshape relations with India, increased control over Latin America under the banners of fighting drug trafficking and "terror." And in each country these moves are read through their own anxieties — about the economy, sovereignty, security and the future of international law.
The first major knot of discussion is the trade-political conflict between the U.S. and Brazil. The new "tarifaço" of the Donald Trump administration — a recommendation from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to impose a 25-percent duty on a wide range of Brazilian imports — sparked in Brazil a surge of both economic fear and political outrage. The conservative Gazeta do Povo, in an editorial comment, describes Washington's decision as a "novo tarifaço de Trump," and President Lula da Silva's reaction as "intempestiva," impulsive and largely electoral: in the paper's view, Lula is using the conflict to accuse his rival Flávio Bolsonaro of having incited Trump during his visit to Washington. The "Gazeta" reproaches the president for bargaining in public instead of seeking a pragmatic solution, and reminds readers that a similar tariff package was already partially halted by a U.S. Supreme Court decision — meaning American institutions can constrain Trump even if rhetoric from the White House is as aggressive as possible.
On the other side of the Brazilian spectrum, economic commentator José Paulo Kupfer in his column on UOL argues that Trump's trade escalation against Brazil in 2026 is "clearly political" in nature and serves as a cover for direct interference in Brazil's presidential elections. He cites numbers: after the first wave of tariffs in 2025, Brazilian exports to the U.S. fell by less than 7%, and Brazil's share of U.S. imports dropped from 12% to 10%. Against this backdrop, the new wave of duties looks, in his view, disproportionate and aimed specifically at weakening Lula's position in an election year and increasing pressure on Brazilian elites by exploiting internal political divisions. Kupfer writes plainly that Trump "usa comércio para camuflar objetivo de interferir nas eleições" — uses trade as a smoke screen to interfere in another country's electoral process.
In the academic and expert field the theme sounds a bit different, but the key motive is the same: the U.S. is seen as a force that uses trade and sanctions as instruments of structural pressure. Analysts at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) write about a "reconfiguration of Washington's policy in the Western Hemisphere" and note that two lines are of special significance for Brazil: security and "minerais críticos" — strategic resources without which green and digital transformation are impossible. In one recent CEBRI piece it is observed that the shift in the U.S. agenda in 2025–2026 — a combination of tariff pressure, supply-chain security and demands regarding "democratic standards" — pushes Brazil toward a policy of "autonomy in cooperation": cooperate where it is profitable, but minimize vulnerability to American economic leverage.
This produces an ambivalent attitude: in the Brazilian press the U.S. is simultaneously perceived as an indispensable market and financial center and as a source of instability capable of suddenly dropping a tariff hammer, launching an investigation against elites or supporting opposition forces. Hence the emotional surges — when Lula recently said that "we cannot accept such treatment of Brazil by the U.S. this week," it was read not only as a response to tariffs but also as a statement of subjectivity: Brazil refuses to recognize an American right to "punish" partners.
The second line, closely connected to the first across Latin America and far beyond Brazil, is the theme of American intervention and "old imperialism." The Spanish-language El País, widely read in Brazil as well, published an article about how "the specter of American intervention once again stalks Mexico, Brazil and Colombia." It links together several of Washington's current initiatives: the new 2026 National Drug Control Strategy, which gives carte blanche for aggressive actions along the entire production and transportation chain of drugs, up to campaigns of alleged "extrajudicial executions" of crews of so-called "narco-boats"; pressure under the banner of "drug-terrorism"; and attempts to interfere in Brazilian internal affairs, including an alleged 2025 attempt to sabotage the judicial process against Jair Bolsonaro. The article's author describes all this as a return to "imperial reflexes," when the U.S. again sees the region not as equal partners but as a board for geopolitical games where leftist governments can be toppled like "dominoes."
This perception is supported by both Brazilian and Mexican commentators: former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has become a sort of symbol of "anti-interventionism," accuses Trump's circle in an open letter of "vil e sinistras aventuras" — vile and sinister adventures under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking and migration. For a Brazilian audience this sounds particularly acute against the backdrop of an all-sided U.S.–Brazil conflict, when Senator Flávio Bolsonaro appeals to Marco Rubio to designate Brazilian criminal groups PCC and Comando Vermelho as terrorist organizations, and Rubio effectively takes up this narrative. In this way Washington gains an additional legal and propaganda resource for a possible hard line in Brazil under the slogan of fighting "drug-terrorism."
It is not surprising that an editorial in El País titled "América Latina no necesita tutelas ni guardianes" concludes that the behavior of the Trump administration in the region "revives a past that took great effort to overcome" and threatens to destroy the international order that was built as an alternative to the "law of the strong." In Brazilian debates this is complemented by deeply historical distrust: a popular post on Portuguese-language Reddit, which gathered hundreds of votes, asserts that studying the real history of U.S. interventions — from Latin America to the Middle East — makes belief in the U.S. as "heroes who saved the world from communism" either naive or even cynical.
The third and perhaps darkest focus of international attention is the U.S. and Israel's war against Iran, which began in late February 2026. In francophone media this theme dominates not only the news but also analytical and opinion genres. The Lebanese L’Orient-Le Jour publishes a strategic analysis titled "the war that was thought to be short": the author explains that the logic of confrontation between the U.S. and Iran long ago went beyond the classic "strike–response" and turned into a war of attrition, where the key point is not so much destroying military targets as the endurance of economies and societies under sanctions and bombing. He emphasizes that Washington seriously underestimated Tehran's ability to adapt and use regional networks of influence, and thus every attempt at a "quick military victory" becomes a prolonged crisis that affects not only Iran but the entire area from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.
The French-language version of the World Socialist Web Site in March published a harsh piece on India's "full complicity" in the "criminal war of aggression by the U.S. and Israel against Iran," cataloguing bombings of schools, hospitals, desalination plants, about two thousand civilian deaths and even the sinking of Iran's flagship immediately after participating in Indian naval exercises. The authors accuse not only Washington but also the Indian establishment, which they say lends moral and political legitimacy to the war by turning a blind eye to its illegality. It is interesting that the same text cites the position of India's left party CPI(M), whose politburo warns that excessive closeness of Modi to American imperialism could run counter to the "national interests" of India itself, depriving it of strategic autonomy.
French and Franco-Canadian columnists, in turn, concentrate more on the strategic irrationality of the war for the United States itself. In the piece "États-Unis c. Iran: une guerre sans bon sens" in the Journal de Montréal the author notes that Iran did not pose an immediate threat to American security and that Trump, even if he formally appealed to Congress, would hardly have received authorization to intervene. Now, with airstrikes wiping out Iranian schools and Trump "in the guise of a wartime leader" trying to mobilize domestic and external support, it becomes clear that Washington does not control either the escalation or the consequences for energy markets. Other pieces, including on Euronews, sound alarms about the risk of the conflict expanding to a genuine blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and triggering a global energy shock.
In Brazil the war with Iran is so far discussed more through the prism of its economic consequences: a recent editorial opinion in the Brazilian press titled "Um freio na guerra" (A Brake on the War) reminds that any escalation in the Persian Gulf instantly drives up oil prices and disrupts logistics chains, which hits countries with already weakened budgets, like Brazil. The authors also recall the U.S. constitutional norm: the right to declare war formally belongs to Congress, not the president. This argument is important not only for American lawyers but also for those in Brazil who hope that institutional checks in Washington can slow further escalation.
In France itself, judging by discussions on social media and comments on the news, skepticism is growing: users on francophone Reddit openly ask why the U.S. is "going back to square one," bombing Iran after an incident with an American helicopter off the coast of Oman, when "a month and a half ago" there were multilateral negotiations about a ceasefire. In popular perception the war is seen not as a "necessary evil" but as the result of Trump's contradictory and inconsistent line, who alternately promises a quick end to hostilities and threatens tougher strikes if Iran attempts to "cut off the world's energy arteries."
Against this background France is paying particular attention to how the U.S. is building relations with India and China. The recent visit of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to India and his invitation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House, reported by AFP and Courrier International among others, was read as part of a broader game: just a week after the Trump–Xi Jinping summit in Beijing, Washington is trying to relaunch the Quad format (U.S., India, Japan, Australia) and show that Indo-Pacific Asia remains a priority despite entanglement in the Iran war. Francophone analytical pieces note that Rubio is trying to convince skeptical partners that the U.S. remains capable of long-term commitments, although recent practice — from unpredictable tariffs to spontaneous actions in the Middle East — suggests otherwise.
In the Indian press and expert community distrust of Washington is even more explicit. On English-language platforms aimed at an Indian audience analysts examine how the sharp trade and diplomatic crisis phase of 2025–2026 — when Trump imposed combined 50-percent tariffs on Indian exports, linking them to purchases of Russian oil — undermined a key vector of American strategy: separating India from Russia and China through promises of a special partnership. The Washington-based platform WP Intelligence noted that, although relations have "formally returned to normal," trust has been seriously eroded, and in New Delhi there is a growing tendency to diversify export markets and technology sources.
Indian leftists, represented by the same CPI(M), explicitly warn that "over-aligning with American imperialism" prevents India from pursuing its own multi-vector policy, especially regarding the war with Iran and relations with Russia and China. For some Indian experts the U.S. looks like a partner unable to maintain a single line: today it offers a framework trade agreement and special status for Indian pharmaceuticals, tomorrow it opens an investigation and threatens new tariffs under the pretext of supply-chain security.
Finally, the francophone world, particularly intellectual and left circles, is watching the figure of Marco Rubio as a "new face of American imperial dominance" — as one Quebec publication puts it. That author dissects Rubio's February Munich speech, in which he effectively admits that the U.S. wants not just "partners" but allies willing to share strategic and military burdens in confronting China and Iran. For many French and Canadian analysts this call for "Europe's responsibility for its own defense" sounds ambiguous: on one hand it seems to encourage European strategic autonomy, on the other it subordinatess that autonomy to the logic of American containment.
All of this creates a common picture: Brazil, India and France (and more broadly — Latin America and the francophone world) see today's U.S. not only as a superpower that errs or abuses force, but as a system that has lost predictability. Tariffs that can be imposed and partially overturned by a court; wars declared "short" but fought for months; partnerships built over years and undermined in six months by sanctions; rhetoric about "democracy and the rule of law" alongside interventionist practices — all of this produces the same reaction in very different countries: a need for strategic distance.
In Brazil this is expressed in the search for "autonomous cooperation" and increasingly frequent reminders about Latin American sovereignty. In India — in a move to diversify economic and military ties and louder voices demanding not to turn the country into a "junior partner" in American wars. In the francophone space — in criticism of the "mad war" with Iran and calls for Europe to think about its own security and energy policy outside of American logic.
The U.S. remains a central actor for all three countries, but today attitudes toward it increasingly differ from the old formula "like it or not, you can't do without them." A different refrain is heard more and more often: "we can't be with them for now, but we'll have to learn to live in a way that makes us less dependent on them." And it is this hidden but growing tendency — toward deliberate distancing — that perhaps most unites the very different reactions to America in Brazil, India and France.
