TRUMP PRESIDENCY: FOR HUNGARY’S PM, SECOND TIME AROUND COULD BE SWEETER

TRUMP PRESIDENCY: FOR HUNGARY’S PM, SECOND TIME AROUND COULD BE SWEETER
Former US president Donald J. Trump (L) and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban shake hands during their meeting at Trump's estate in Bedminster, New Jersey, USA, 02 August 2022. EPA-EFE/Vivien Cher Benko

March 7, 202407:52
The former US president’s return is dreaded in many European capitals, but not in Budapest. Orban is openly praying for a Trump victory to give himself greater room to manoeuvre on the world stage and a more decisive role in the Western Balkans.


Awarm reunion is expected on Friday when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban meets Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. With the former president riding high in the polls and his Republican nomination all but assured after the Super Tuesday primaries, Orban could well be sitting down with the next US president.

“We would very much like president Donald Trump to return to the presidency and make peace here in Eastern Europe. It is time for a ‘Make America Great Again’ presidency in America,” the Hungarian leader said during his recent state of the nation address in mid-February.
Last week, at Turkey’s Antalya Diplomatic Forum, Orban reiterated his belief that if Trump had been in office, there never would have been a war in Ukraine, and that Trump is the only person who can broker peace and stop the bloodshed. “Trump’s return is a precondition for a strong and quick peace on the European continent,” not only in Europe but also in Gaza, where the former president “understands the conflict”, claimed Orban.

The Hungarian leader has invested a lot in this particular political love affair. Orban supported Trump even before his surprise victory in the 2016 general election, and did not turn his back on him when the Republican lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

In the last four years, Orban and Trump have become ever-closer political allies, praising each other for their right-wing, anti-immigration policies, and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder against progressive, woke ideologies. Orban even endorsed Trump publicly when multiple criminal charges were filed against him. “Keep on fighting,” he encouraged the former president on Twitter.

Now it’s payback time, many in Hungarian government circles are hoping.

“The political climate between Hungary and the US would certainly change if Trump was elected, and the pressure on Hungary would soften: ambassadors would not micromanage and differences would not be discussed in public,” says Tamas Magyarics, US historian and professor emeritus at Budapest’s ELTE University, alluding to the current US ambassador David Pressman, who is never shy of criticising Hungary’s democratic backsliding under Orban’s government, and who has also waged a fierce social media campaign that often mocked its members.

Gladden Pappin, the US-born director of the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs, whose recent interview to Unherd was titled “Why Does the American Right Love Viktor Orban?”, is even more outspoken. “Let’s face it, Hungary is under quasi-sanctions from the US. The Democrats funded the Hungarian opposition, Washington cancelled the tax treaty and rolled back the visa waiver program. These are distressing and harmful measures. With Trump back in office, relations will normalise,” Pappin predicts in an interview with BIRN.

While the lectures on democracy and liberal values will probably cease, no one is yet talking about big deals or investments. Defence purchases from the US are on hold, especially after Hungary extended its lease on Swedish Gripen fighter jets instead of switching to US jets like the Czech Republic.
US President Donald J. Trump (R) and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 May 2019. EPA-EFE/Szilard Koszticsak

Big in the Balkans

Trump’s return to the White House is unlikely to elevate Orban’s status much on the world stage, but it could increase his influence in the Western Balkans, some in government circles expect.

“Peace in the Western Balkans could be high on Trump’s foreign policy agenda,” Agoston Samuel Mraz, director of the conservative Nezopont Institute think tank, tells BIRN.

Trump’s former Balkans envoy, Richard Grenell, could make a return to the US administration, bursting with ambition, he predicts. “A lasting peace – a peace agreement between Serbia and Kosovo – could be a historic achievement for Trump, who wants to leave his mark on history,” says Mraz.

Orban’s expertise and close personal ties with most of the region’s political leaders could prove invaluable to this effort, while he could even act as a go-between between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik and a Trump administration.

Playing to Orban’s strengths is the conviction that democratic values will take a back seat as Trumps follow a similar realpolitik– and transaction-based strategy to the Hungarian government, which looks to prioritise business deals over anything else.

A diplomatic plus for the Hungarian government is that the US presidential election will take place during Hungary’s six-month stint as president of the Council of the EU. As one the few European leaders who has a direct channel to Trump, Orban could gain some extra heft from this in EU political circles, suggests Mraz.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto (R) welcomes China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) prior to their meeting in Budapest, Hungary, 20 February 2023. EPA-EFE/ZOLTAN MATHE


Dragon in the room

A potential stumbling block to all this is China. In 2023, China became the largest foreign investor in Hungary with the arrival of the world’s second biggest electric carmaker BYD and leading battery manufacturer CATL. Orban openly promotes the idea that Hungary, as an EU and NATO member, could form a “meeting point” of Western and Eastern businesses.

Some experts in Hungary wonder how far Trump would be prepared to tolerate such an idea. Yet those consulted by BIRN insist that a “pragmatic approach” will eventually win out. Mraz from the Nezopont Institute is counting on “perhaps a few rough months in the beginning”, but does not believe that Hungary’s friendship with Beijing will be a major problem in the long run.

Magyarics also plays down the potential danger, arguing it is rather Berlin and German industry that have the most to fear, not Budapest. “If Trump had introduced a 50 per cent tariff on Chinese products, as he promised in 2016, he would have lost most of his voters. The US, like Europe, cannot completely cut itself off from China. But if there is pressure on Europe to align itself with the US, it will be a problem for Germany and Brussels, not for Hungary,” Magyarics says.

Pappin, the director of the Hungarian Institute of International Relations, shares this optimism. “Trump’s main agenda will be to rebuild US industry. He is a dealmaker and will not put pressure on other countries,” Pappin says with conviction.

Yet he also admits it is too early to predict what a Trump 2.0 foreign policy will look like exactly. “The world has become much more complex than it was in 2016, when Trump was governing in peacetime. But it is almost certain that the main focus will be on Ukraine, the Middle East and Asia,” he says.

For Europe, the biggest challenge will not be China, but how or whether to continue financing Ukraine in its war with Russia. “The US pocketbook will not be open forever,” Pappin warns, referring to diminishing US aid to Kyiv.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban delivering his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, USA, 04 August 2022. EPA-EFE/Vivien Cher Benko

Shared Heritage

The policies Trump will campaign on are currently being drafted with the help of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington DC-based conservative think tank that also plays a central role in US-Hungarian relations.

Heritage’s president, Kevin Roberts, is set to host Orban for a panel discussion on Thursday, the day before his meeting with Trump. Heritage, which is positioning itself as a pro-Trump think tank, is already training civil servants for a future Trump administration, with rumours that up to 12,000 bureaucrats will be laid off. And pro-Hungarian government organisations, such as the Centre for Fundamental Rights and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) training centre, are regular guests of Heritage.

Orban’s political director, Balazs Orban (no relation to the prime minister), who also acts as a key foreign-policy adviser, spent last week touring Washington DC, including the Heritage Foundation, while promoting an English translation of his new book, Hussar Cut – The Hungarian Strategy for Connectivity.

Budapest will also again host in April the European iteration of the Republican Conservative Action Conference, or CPAC, one of the largest international gatherings of conservative to far-right thinkers and politicians. “Hungary’s soft diplomacy is strong, the country is back on the map,” reckons Pappin.

Likewise, during the US election campaign, Hungarian campaign advisors could share know-how with Republican colleagues who are mainly interested in how to create “effective government” that will ensure long-term governance and a sufficient majority. “The Republicans are aware that it is not enough to promise lower taxes, more needs to be done to protect conservative values and traditions,” says Pappin.

In fact, Orban shared his playbook for power at the CPAC conference in Budapest in 2022, which to many critics sounded like an autocrat’s guide to power. Advice included – among other things – building a strong media empire to control the narrative, creating (or rather taking over) institutions, and building a strong national and international conservative community. All these are measures that have led inexorably to the eradication of much political competition in Hungary and a highly polarised society.

Of course, there are legions of critics in Hungary who warn about Orban putting all his eggs in one basket, and if Trump loses the election in November, Hungarian foreign policy and wider diplomacy could find itself in a dark hole. With Biden (or any other Democrat) in the White House, US-Hungarian relations would sour even further, while Orban could even lose friends in the Republican camp as it jettisons baggage and looks for fresh faces to reinvigorate the party.

“In politics you have to take risks, just like Orban did in 2016,” says Magyarics. “It worked then; it could work this time.

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