'Humiliated' Trump has discovered 'world leaders are harder to bully': analyst

Donald Trump's wavering on tariffs and admission that he has not been able to bring the war in Ukraine to a halt is a sign he's finding out that world leaders are increasingly not taking him seriously.

According to an analysis by CNN's Stephen Collinson, bullying may work on Republican party lawmakers who fear he'll ruin their careers, but it is quite another thing to make demands of foreign diplomats in countries where Trump is considered either an irritant or a joke.

As Collinson wrote, Trump's inability to get anything done internationally is frustrating him and there is no relief in sight for the putative leader of the free world.

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In large part Trump's growing problems stem with him "being ignored and humiliated" by Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the Moscow media piling on and "portraying Trump as the tough talker who always blinks and never imposes consequences."

Trump's wavering on China –– which has given rise to the "Trump Always Chickens Out" (TACO) joke on Wall Street –– is seen as yet another sign that he is a paper tiger, suggested the analyst.

"Trump is busily squandering this legacy and shattering US soft power — ie. the power to persuade — with his belligerence," the CNN analyst wrote before predicting, " The first four months of the Trump presidency, with its tariff threats, warnings of US territorial expansion in Canada and Greenland and evisceration of global humanitarian aid programs show that the rest of the world gets a say in what happens too. So far, leaders in China, Russia, Israel, Europe and Canada appear to have calculated that Trump is not as powerful as he thinks he is, that there’s no price for defying him or that their own internal politics make resistance mandatory."

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