It was well after 2 a.m., but an aide to Vice President JD Vance was trying to roust a senior Ukrainian official out of his bed in a Munich hotel. He wanted a face-to-face meeting to close a deal letting the United States extract valuable minerals in Ukraine, a priority of the new president, Donald J. Trump.
It had to be done that night, the aide said, before Mr. Vance was scheduled to meet the next day with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a trans-Atlantic security conference. The Ukrainian protested that it was late and refused to leave his room, according to a foreign policy adviser briefed on the incident. The meeting the next day went ahead, though the proposal remained unsigned.
The minerals deal, which was finally signed on Wednesday, and the pre-dawn attempt to push it through in February, are a telling symbol of American statecraft in the second Trump administration. Exploitative, transactional, almost imperial in its demands, the deal encapsulates Mr. Trump’s approach to the world in his first 100 days, a chaotic period unlike any in the post-World War II era.
From the NATO alliance to the global trading system, Mr. Trump has swung a giant wrecking ball through the existing world order.
New cars at an import and export zone in Guangzhou, China, last month. China has responded to Mr. Trump’s triple-digit levies in kind — confident that in many industries, it so completely dominates the supply chain that rivals would find it hard to make comparable goods elsewhere.Credit…Qilai Shen for The New York Times
U.S. marines participating in a NATO Arctic training exercise in northern Norway in March. European officials worry that tens of thousands of American troops may be pulled out of Europe over the next few months or years.Credit…Davide Monteleone for The New York Times