For many years, global business in western economies relied on a stable assumption. Politics mattered, but it sat outside the market. Governments set rules. Companies adapted. Political risk could usually be managed through regulation, contracts and contingency planning.
That assumption no longer holds.
Since Donald Trump returned to power in 2025, the boundary between US state power and commercial leverage has narrowed sharply. This reflects a governing style. It is changing how corporates and law firms operate, how they see themselves, and how clients assess them.
Politics and commerce are now closely intertwined. Economic activity is increasingly used as an instrument of state power.
Why the United States matters
The United States sits at the centre of this shift and is setting the pace.
Trade, supply chains, capital flows, energy, technology and industrial capacity are treated as matters of national security – strategic assets to protect. As a result, access to markets, technology and capital is becoming conditional.
For companies, this creates a new form of exposure. Commercial decisions can trigger political consequences. Market access may depend on alignment as much as compliance.
There is also a procedural change. Since Trump’s return to office, the US has shown a willingness to act first and justify later. This alters how precedent is created. Action establishes the position. Legal reasoning follows.
Predictability has weakened. Contracts and norms still matter, but they no longer offer the same insulation from geopolitical intervention.
Alignment as a commercial variable
Since early 2025, US conduct has changed the implied rules of the game.
The weakening of enforcement and the blurring of political authority with commercial interest are not read by global clients as domestic policy choices. They are read as signals about how power will be exercised.
Law firms trade on credibility. When rules appear contingent, clients expect divergence. Other jurisdictions enforce more strictly. Standards fragment. Risk is priced unevenly.
In this environment, alignment becomes a commercial variable.
A concrete illustration is emerging in Europe’s technology procurement. In January 2026, the French state announced that government departments would replace US video-conferencing tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams with a French alternative, Visio, citing the need to protect the security and confidentiality of public communications. The point is not the software, but the signal. Even routine operational choices are being reframed as sovereignty decisions, with cost, security and political alignment collapsing into a single procurement question.
This is consistent with a wider European push for “technological sovereignty” and a growing sensitivity to legal reach, including concern that US laws can expose data held by US providers even when hosted in Europe. In practice, this widens the scope of alignment risk into the core of enterprise systems.
When geopolitics becomes operational
Strategy documents and rhetoric can be dismissed. What matters is whether posture becomes action and whether those actions create precedent.
During Trump’s second term, doctrine has been enacted through behaviour. Moves are made, reactions follow, and actions are framed as necessity. Repetition establishes precedent.
Recent developments indicate a willingness to escalate, act decisively and defend those actions through asserted authority.
Venezuela
The intervention in Venezuela marked a departure from established practice. The extraction of the Venezuelan president by US special forces was framed as law enforcement. It lacked multilateral authorisation and grounding in settled international legal frameworks.
Concern focused less on legal interpretation than on what this signalled. The constraint system appeared to be under test.
Statements implying US control over Venezuela’s oil industry followed. This shifted the issue into the commercial domain. Questions arose about contract sanctity, concession security and enforceability.
For firms and investors, the issue was predictability. When power and sovereignty dominate, contracts become conditional.
International law and exception
These events raise a question that would once have been difficult to ask openly. Does international law constrain US action where core strategic interests are asserted.
The evidence points to comfort with legal exceptionalism. Where enforcement depends on geopolitical alignment rather than settled norms, legal analysis alone no longer captures risk.
Contracts, licences, approvals and corporate presence become contingent on political posture.
Greenland and the limits of alliance
The implications of the current US approach extend beyond adversarial states and into the heart of the alliance system.
Since early 2025, Greenland has moved from being a strategic talking point to an active pressure point. The US administration has framed control of the territory as a security necessity and has questioned Denmark’s ability to protect it, despite Denmark’s status as a Nato ally. Ownership itself has been openly challenged.
This posture has been reinforced by economic threat. Tariffs were threatened against countries opposing an American takeover of Greenland, including Nato allies. Trade pressure has been used as leverage to force alignment rather than as a last resort.
The tone also hardened to include personal grievance. In a letter to the Norwegian prime minister, President Trump linked his approach to Greenland to being passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, stating that he no longer felt obliged to act purely in the interests of peace and would instead consider what he viewed as proper for the United States. Strategic necessity and personal grievance were placed side by side.
European leaders have responded publicly. Denmark’s prime minister stated that the United States has no right to annex Greenland. The UK has warned that tariffs imposed on allies would undermine transatlantic relations. France called for consideration of retaliatory measures. The European Union openly discussed the use of its anti-coercion instruments.
Public sentiment followed. At a recent NBA game in London, the US national anthem was jeered amid calls to leave Greenland alone. What would once have been confined to diplomatic channels is now visible in public reaction.
For commerce, the signal is clear. Allied status no longer guarantees insulation where strategic geography, resources or infrastructure are involved. Economic pressure is being normalised as a tool of alignment.
For law firms, this reframes risk. Firms with strong US ties may be perceived as closer to the source of pressure, while firms structurally outside the US system may be seen as offering greater insulation on sensitive mandates.
Sanctions and coercion
Coercion is not confined to physical intervention.
Sanctions imposed on European individuals, framed around alleged crimes against freedom of speech, extend state power into professional life. Access to the US becomes an enforcement tool.
Visas, travel, professional engagement and market participation are placed at risk. For firms, the consequences are operational. Geopolitical risk attaches to individuals as well as institutions.
Accelerated selectivity and market structure
These forces are reshaping how clients buy legal services.
Legal spend is not being withdrawn wholesale, but is being segmented earlier. Sensitivity, perception and alignment are priced in from the outset.
This has market consequences. Global platforms often explain regional retrenchment through profitability or focus. Those explanations no longer tell the full story.
Structural independence has acquired strategic value. A locally governed firm may be perceived as less exposed to external political leverage.
This extends beyond domestic firms. International firms with no US presence can offer global capability without US jurisdictional exposure. For certain mandates, that combination now carries clear appeal.
Cross-border reach no longer requires US presence. Alliances and referral networks can deliver capability without external control.
Neutrality and internal pressure
Neutrality is no longer presumed. It must be demonstrated.
Firms must understand how governance structures are read and how clients interpret alignment risk. Procurement decisions now carry narrative and regulatory consequences.
These pressures extend into global partnerships. As clients outside the US reprice alignment risk, partners face scrutiny from boards, regulators and competitors.
Separating US colleagues from US geopolitical posture becomes difficult. Geopolitics translates into social emotion and reputational pressure for firms perceived as US centred. Over time, this complicates governance and intensifies debates around autonomy and risk appetite.
There is a domestic overlay to this. For example, recent UK data from the Edelman Trust Barometer suggests that distrust is hardening into a default stance: a large majority of respondents said they were unwilling or hesitant to trust people with different values or cultural backgrounds, and many would avoid working for leaders whose beliefs diverge sharply. In global partnerships, that sort of social temperature matters. It makes internal disagreement easier to trigger, harder to resolve, and more likely to be read as an identity issue rather than a commercial debate.
Pressure on law firms
The Trump effect is also professional.
When the US administration applies pressure to law firms and leading firms respond quietly to protect access or revenue, clients draw conclusions about independence.
For global and international firms, this is amplified by structure. Many remain US centred in revenue and influence. That centre of gravity now creates exposure.
Clients translate this into procurement questions about independence, revenue flows and influence. In some cases, the absence of a US office or revenue stream becomes a positive factor.
A strategic opening
For two decades, global scale combined with a US presence signalled quality and ambition. That assumption held in a more stable environment.
As politics and commerce converge, scale alone is no longer sufficient. Alignment, exposure and control shape outcomes.
This creates an opening for domestic firms, regional firms and international firms operating outside the US system.
These firms can offer jurisdictional grounding, local governance, reduced exposure to political leverage and regulatory fluency. This advantage is most visible on mandates involving public policy, regulation, sanctions exposure, infrastructure, energy and data.
Global firms face complex choices. They may pursue dominance with narrower appeal. They may regionalise governance. Or they may align explicitly with US access.
Each path involves trade-offs.
The end of inevitability
Global elite firms remain elite. However, they are no longer inevitable. Their status carries uneven weight across markets.
Domestic, regional and non-US international firms that combine technical excellence with strategic clarity can compete on relevance, risk management and alignment.
For clients, this creates choice, and for law firm leaders, it requires strategy.