For European allies of the United States, President Trump’s White House is structured like a court: the gilded Oval Office a place for advisers, pals and courtiers, all awaiting the decrees of the president.

Mr. Trump is the ultimate decision maker, and far from a predictable one. So in the first three months of this Trump presidency, getting through to the president himself is the Europeans’ goal. Some have succeeded, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who is expected to meet him at the White House on Thursday.

What is most confusing, European officials say, is that the most efficient interlocutors are not traditional diplomats working through institutions, but special envoys and advisers like Elon Musk. And it is never quite clear whether the messages get through to Mr. Trump, even if he is more likely to trust an old friend like Steve Witkoff, whom he has installed as a foreign policy negotiator, over the civil servants he disdains.

“Everyone in D.C. says you have to talk to Trump directly,” a senior European official said.

The European officials said they found Trump officials polite but consumed with fulfilling the president’s wishes and said they expressed little interest in their allies.

For example, American officials gave no heads up to key European nations about renewed talks last Saturday with Iran over its nuclear program, two European officials said. The European countries — Britain, France and Germany — were signatories to the 2015 nuclear agreement that the president later left, had been the instigators and intermediaries for that deal and have been trying themselves to advance negotiations on a new one.

Though collectively one of the world’s most formidable economies, home to nearly 750 million people and major U.S. allies, Europe is not a Trump priority. Instead, Mr. Trump sees Europe as a rival or even an adversary, believing that the European Union was created “to screw the United States.”

The Trump administration is “not terribly interested in what the Europeans have to say,” a European official said. “It’s all about unilateralism and they don’t consult much. After all, if they don’t consider us allies to that extent, why would they?”

The New York Times spoke to European officials in Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris, Rome and other capitals to get a sense of how they are interacting with the Trump administration. Most were not authorized to openly discuss their interactions and spoke on the condition that they not be named.

In private, the Europeans said, Trump officials are welcoming and say reassuring things about his commitment to Europe, NATO and collective defense. That has been true, the officials said, of those like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and even Vice President JD Vance. Meetings are “cordial,” one American official said. Mr. Rubio and Mr. Witkoff traveled to Paris on Wednesday for talks with French leaders about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But it is never clear to allies whether either man has real power over foreign policy or trade. In public, their comments about allies can be searing, as a kind of bond with Mr. Trump, while European officials are keeping silent for the most part to avoid his ire.

Allied officials said that they can talk — sometimes — to Trump appointees like Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, or special envoys including Mr. Witkoff or Keith Kellogg, but that they are busy with many tasks. Mr. Witkoff has no official counterpart in European countries, so consultations can be haphazard. Mr. Waltz has become more cautious even in private after the revelation that he inadvertently added a journalist to a Signal text chain of top Trump advisers, one official said.

Traditional channels — through the State Department, embassies, the National Security Council — have proved more difficult for productive exchanges, partly because the Senate has confirmed so few high-ranking officials. That is not unusual for new administrations, but it frustrates allies around the world. And political appointees at lower levels, who do not need Senate confirmation, are said to be more fervently allied to Mr. Trump’s “America First” policies.

Pentagon officials are especially careful in conversations with allies, the officials said, attributing that reticence to a fear of being fired. A senior British military official recently professed confusion about who was steering the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific policy in the White House, a critical area for Britain.

White House spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

Mistrusting multilateralism

Mr. Trump, who despises the collective power of the European Union and sees many NATO allies as freeloaders, maintains his mistrust of multilateral institutions, even those designed by Washington, as obstacles to American power.

His officials take that as policy. Mr. Rubio refused at the last minute to meet Kaja Kallas, the E.U. foreign and security chief who favors stronger resistance to Russia, when she flew to Washington in February to see him. Other Europeans are not even getting on the calendar: Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has failed in repeated efforts to meet Mr. Trump. A spokeswoman for the Commission said that a meeting had not yet been possible.

That has left Europe relying on national leaders to form bridges to the Oval Office. One is Ms. Meloni, the only E.U. leader invited to Mr. Trump’s inauguration. She tried for weeks before securing the White House meeting with Mr. Trump, one U.S. official said, citing scheduling conflicts.

Ms. Meloni, a far-right politician, is taking care not to alienate either Brussels or Washington, and a role as European interlocutor is unlikely to have much weight. But at least she will have a chance to speak directly to Mr. Trump about Italian — and European — concerns.

Though the European Union has considerable heft in trade and regulations, Mr. Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has regularly declined to meet European officials. Others described polite but cold welcomes from cabinet officials dealing with trade and financial issues.

Conversations on trade with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have been friendly and even sympathetic, but it has been clear to European officials that he does not speak for the administration — Mr. Trump alone is making policy decisions, and they may change without notice. Mr. Lutnick himself admitted to CBS News that he was more of a messenger than a decision maker.

Maros Sefcovic, the E.U. commissioner for trade, met with Mr. Lutnick for two hours on Monday. But he made little progress toward striking a deal, and it was not clear to officials after the meeting what the American goals are.

NATO’s delicate moment

Many top European officials share the view that Western support for Ukraine must include the United States — an issue that has divided the Trump administration. Mr. Trump’s embrace of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his renewed demands that other members contribute more to NATO have left Europe in a vulnerable spot.

NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, succeeded in meeting with Mr. Trump in mid-March, after which he came away reassured, for now, about the president’s support for collective defense.

While he will happily meet with Mr. Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Mr. Rutte believes that his personal relationship with Mr. Trump — forged when he was the prime minister of the Netherlands — is the best and perhaps only guarantee of a fair hearing, officials familiar with his thinking said.

NATO, which is popular among Americans, is also working to preserve those views in the face of Mr. Trump’s skepticism. European alliance officials who grew up viewing the United States as its core were recently surprised to be assigned to convince young Americans of its worth.

Influencing Americans ages 18 to 30 was the No. 1 priority of an outreach campaign, running from March to May, according to a briefing document shared with The Times — to promote “enhanced awareness of NATO’s relevance & purpose to national security.” A NATO official declined to comment on the document but said the alliance routinely tries to connect with international audiences.

Leader to leader

Some of Europe’s most prominent leaders have navigated the administration with a mix of flattery and attempts to find common cause.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, who like Mr. Rutte has a long relationship with Mr. Trump, is said to be able to get Mr. Trump on the phone fairly easily, as is Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain.

Mr. Starmer notably turned up at the White House in February with a formal invitation to Mr. Trump from King Charles III for a rare second state visit, and he has resolutely refused to criticize the president.

But his solicitous approach has yielded mixed results. Mr. Trump did not spare Britain from his basic 10 percent tariff.

Britain set out to negotiate its own trade deal with the United States before Mr. Trump announced his tariffs. But its team had to navigate the idiosyncrasies of Mr. Trump’s administration.

Mr. Lutnick, who has led the talks, has been very “broad brush” in his approach, according to a senior British official. Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, is good on details, but has little clout internally.

But as with other Europeans, there is also less satisfaction at a working level, partly because of unease about Mr. Trump’s outreach to Mr. Putin and bullying of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The Americans do not want the Europeans meddling in the relationship with Moscow, the officials said, and have resisted European demands to participate in negotiations on Ukraine and for U.S. involvement in any post-settlement security guarantees.

In Mr. Trump’s world, Europe exemplifies the old consensus represented by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and should learn to take care of itself while Washington redefines the world.

“They think Europe is weak,” Anna Cavazzini, a German member of the European Parliament, said after a trip to Washington. “Europe is built on cooperation. They are not interested in cooperation so much.”

Michael Crowley contributed reporting.

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and his subordinates are mounting a diplomatic full court press to try to persuade other countries not to cave to pressure from the Trump administration on tariffs, hoping to show that China will not be isolated in the trade war.

In recent days, China’s commerce minister has held a video call with the European Union’s top trade official, pushing for closer cooperation. Chinese diplomats have been contacting officials in Tokyo and Seoul. And Mr. Xi landed in Vietnam and Malaysia on state visits this week where he was greeted with carefully choreographed crowds of supporters.

At stake for Mr. Xi are the fate of the global trading system that propelled China’s rise as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse, as well as access to markets for many Chinese exports now that the United States has sought to cut them off with debilitating tariffs.

The outreach is also a test of China’s status as a global power in the face of what Beijing sees as an effort by Washington to contain and suppress its key rival. China has fought back against the Trump administration with its own eye-watering tariffs on U.S. goods, as well as restrictions on the export of some rare earth minerals and magnets that are vital for assembling cars, missiles and drones.

To that end, Mr. Xi has tried to assemble a broader coalition to his side — hoping to keep countries from slapping tariffs of their own on Chinese products, or giving in to Washington’s demands to decouple from Chinese manufacturing.

During his travels in Southeast Asia this week, he has depicted China as a leading defender of the global order and indirectly cast the United States as an unreliable player. In Hanoi, he urged Vietnam to join China in opposing “unilateral bullying.” In Kuala Lumpur, he urged Southeast Asian nations to also “reject decoupling, supply disruption,” and “tariff abuse.”

“Chinese officials have quietly conveyed that the way the U.S. treats its longstanding allies and partners in Europe is a sign of what’s to come for Southeast Asia,” said Lynn Kuok, the Lee Kuan Yew Chair at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “With Trump’s steep, sweeping tariffs across the region, that message needs no reinforcement.”

But Mr. Xi’s attempts at presenting China as a paragon of free trade and a champion of the rules-based international order ignores years of Beijing’s own coercive economic behavior and generous subsidies for select industries that have often alienated the country’s trading partners and neighbors. It partly explains why the world’s eroding trust in Washington has not immediately led to newfound alignment with Beijing — that, along with the risk of retribution from Mr. Trump for siding with China.

Already, the European Union, Japan and South Korea have pushed back at attempts by China to suggest that they had agreed with China to jointly fight back against Mr. Trump’s tariffs. European Union officials have instead emphasized their concerns about the dumping of Chinese goods in their market. Last week, Australia rejected a call by China’s ambassador, Xiao Qian, to “join hands” in rebuffing the Trump administration.

These reactions to China’s entreaties show that “Beijing is not filling the vacuum of trust left by the U.S., just offering immediate relief from the shock therapy the Trump administration has forced upon the world,” said Rorry Daniels, the managing director of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.

Mr. Xi’s long-planned trip to Vietnam this week, followed by a visit to Malaysia before a stop in Cambodia, has taken on more urgency for China now that President Trump is using his 90-day pause on his “Liberation Day” tariff hikes to press countries to negotiate trade deals with the United States. Mr. Trump, too, has shown urgency by inserting himself into trade negotiations on Wednesday with Japanese officials visiting Washington.

Beijing’s fear, analysts say, is that these deals will isolate China by including agreements that choke off Chinese exports. That could be through coordinated tariffs, or a crackdown on Chinese companies transshipping their goods through third countries like Vietnam to obscure their true origin, or by targeting Chinese raw materials in exports headed to the United States.

Vietnam lavished Mr. Xi with the rare honor of being greeted by a Vietnamese president on the airport tarmac when he arrived in the country on Monday. But Hanoi resisted agreeing with Mr. Xi’s boldest comments condemning protectionism, and ultimately signed onto a vague joint statement opposing “hegemonism and power politics” — an accusation that many in Vietnam assign to China during territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

For Vietnam, the threat of a 46 percent U.S. levy prompted teams of negotiators to head to Washington to make an appeal for lower tariffs. In a concession to Mr. Trump, the Vietnamese government this week promised to crack down on trade fraud — widely seen as a reference to companies shipping Chinese products through Vietnam to evade U.S. tariffs.

Still, Mr. Trump kept the pressure on Hanoi, telling reporters on Monday that Mr. Xi’s meeting with Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, was probably focused on how to “screw” America.

“Hanoi is being careful not to signal a tilt too far toward Beijing, especially in areas that could displease the Trump administration,” said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “Ultimately, Hanoi is still hedging between the world’s two great powers. But as the geopolitical climate hardens, the space to do so is rapidly shrinking.”

Vietnam risks retaliation from its much bigger neighbor if Beijing determines that Hanoi is trying to curry favor with the Trump administration at China’s expense.

China placed tariffs of up to 100 percent on canola, pork and other foods from Canada last month in a clear warning to countries not to cooperate with Washington on trade.

To Beijing, if trading partners “pander to the United States, they will hurt China and at the same time, they will hurt their own country as well,” said Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based international relations scholar.

That threat was reinforced on Sunday by Yuyuan Tantian, a blog affiliated with China’s state broadcaster, CCTV. China would not comment on talks between other countries and the United States, the post said. “But if anyone uses China’s interests as a token of allegiance to the United States, China will never agree!”

The warning underscores how Beijing has been both courting and confronting its neighbors as President Trump has been recalibrating Washington’s place in the world. Mr. Xi’s expression of “deep friendship” with Vietnam during his visit came not long after China held live-fire drills in the Gulf of Tonkin to reassert its territorial claims in those waters over Hanoi.

Even if China fails to build a united front against the Trump administration’s tariffs, it would still benefit from making other countries think twice about aligning their trade policies with the United States, said Jonathan Czin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who formerly worked in the Central Intelligence Agency and studies Chinese politics.

“Xi doesn’t necessarily need these countries to choose Beijing,” Mr. Czin said. “He just needs to prevent them from choosing Washington. That is part of why China’s ‘charm offensive’ has so far had such a dearth of charm.”

Tung Ngo in Danang, Choe Sang-Hun in Seoul, Martin Fackler in Tokyo and Berry Wang in Hong Kong contributed reporting.

On a recent afternoon in Bila Tserkva, a quiet city in central Ukraine, a 59-year-old history teacher settled into a colorful cafe, opened a laptop and logged into Chatroulette, an online platform that connects strangers worldwide.

His goal? To teach Russians, citizens of a nation that has invaded his, a bit of Ukrainian history.

Within minutes, a middle-aged Russian man appeared on the screen, speaking from what looked like a grocery store. Vitalii Dribnytsia, the history teacher, wasted no time, opening with a deliberately provocative question: “Who does Crimea belong to?” he asked, referring to the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

“To us,” the man replied without hesitation.

What followed was a dizzying exchange on the historical roots of Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine’s war of independence from 1917 to 1921, and the Ukrainian language. At times, the Russian man hesitated about historical facts, but in the end, he waved it all away. “The internet will tell you everything,” he said. “Ukraine never existed and never will.”

This was just one of hundreds of online conversations Mr. Dribnytsia, a former middle school and high school teacher, has had with random Russians over the past three years of war, as he seeks to challenge the Kremlin’s narrative that Ukrainian nationhood is a fiction and, by extension, that Ukraine belongs to Russia.

Almost every day, for several hours at a time, Mr. Dribnytsia engages with Russians on Chatroulette, using a matter-of-fact tone and sharp questions to try to debunk widely held beliefs in Russia: that Ukraine as a nation was created by the Soviet Union, that its leaders are neo-Nazis or that its language is merely a dialect of Russian.

Videos of Mr. Dribnytsia’s candid discussions, which he uploads to YouTube, have attracted a huge following in Ukraine. His YouTube channel, called “Vox Veritatis,” Latin for “The Voice of the Truth,” boasts nearly half a million subscribers, with Ukrainians watching the conversations to learn more about their own history and sharpen their arguments in defense of Ukraine’s right to sovereignty.

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