Sydney, Australia Correspondent — I don’t have a vote and I’m not going to pretend to a preference, but I can tell you how this looks from an allied capital, and it’s more mixed than either campaign would like.

On China the substance was correct and I’d say so plainly. The prior consensus underweighted the competitive problem, the tariffs and technology restrictions forced a recognition that was overdue, and the recognition is now bipartisan in Washington in a way it wasn’t four years ago. That’s a real achievement and it survives whoever wins tonight.

Here’s the cost, and it’s the part that doesn’t get said at American tables. We asked for an inquiry into the origins of the virus and were answered with tariffs on barley, suspended abattoirs, and pressure on our universities. We are absorbing that alone. An approach that forces the confrontation without organising the allies to share the retaliation puts the smaller partner in the front rank, and that’s where we currently are.

The other question is durability. We buy submarines that enter service in the 2030s. Planning around a partner whose commitments shift on a shorter cycle than our procurement is genuinely difficult, and every capital in our region has started hedging.

So: the direction was right and the method transferred cost to the people standing next to you. Both of those are true, and an American voter can weigh them however they like.

Dayton, Ohio Correspondent — Strategic risk over the next decade is driven mainly by China, and I’d say that as somebody who reads a bill of materials rather than a cable.

Trump forced a bipartisan recognition that the engagement model had failed in critical technologies and supply chains. The methods were chaotic and the direction was necessary.

Biden offers more predictable alliance management and a less disruptive style, and the risk there is sliding back toward complacency because the disruption was uncomfortable.

On the central long-term competition I favor Trump. On the execution I’d note that four years of tariffs haven’t yet produced the domestic capacity they were supposed to produce, and that’s the measure I’d hold either winner to.

Orange County, California Correspondent — The harder line on China and on critical technology was the more realistic response to the actual competition, and the capital markets adjusted accordingly.

What I’d add is that the investment screening regime built over these four years is the more durable achievement and gets almost no attention. Tariffs can be reversed by a signature. A review process that has changed how cross-border transactions get structured is harder to unwind and probably matters more.

On long-term strategic risk that gives the incumbent the advantage regardless of what happens to the tariff schedule.

Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent — Again I’ll analyse rather than endorse.

The observation I’d offer is that both candidates are describing a strategic competition in which my region is a location rather than a participant. Caribbean states are being asked, increasingly directly, to choose between American security relationships and Chinese infrastructure financing, and we are being asked by people who are not offering an alternative to the financing.

Whichever approach reduces long-term risk for the United States, neither reduces it for us, because both leave the choice framed as loyalty rather than as terms.

If the next administration wants the smaller states of this hemisphere aligned, the instrument is a competing offer rather than a warning about the other one. That has been true for twenty years and neither campaign has said it.

Tyler, Texas Correspondent — China is the long file, and Trump treated it as a rival rather than as a seminar partner. Tariffs, entity lists, and a public sentence that the old arrangement was a bad deal.

He’s loud about alliances and loud isn’t the same as leaving, though I understand why it reads that way from Canberra or Warsaw.

Iran: he wouldn’t write them a path and a pallet of cash. Russia: he talks like a landlord rather than a lecturer, and the lecturing didn’t deter much either.

Biden’s stack sounds like a restoration of the room that produced the exposure. I’d rather have the closeness to the actual files even when the summits are uglier.

Jacksonville, Florida Correspondent — Ships and lanes are the job, and the job says the competition is real.

Trump is ruder to Beijing and clearer that a security guarantee isn’t free. Biden is smoother with rooms that already failed this test once.

I’ll take rude with a full magazine over smooth with a process. Iran isn’t a process and China isn’t a process. They’re clocks.

I’d want the next one, whoever it is, to say the object and the measure of done before anything starts.

Cheyenne, Wyoming Correspondent — Name the rival. Price the rival. Don’t pay the rival for a lecture.

That’s the incumbent. The other ticket talks like 2015, and 2015 is the risk.

Long Island, New York Correspondent — Alliances are cheaper when the allied capital believes you’ll still be there after a bad week, and Trump makes that belief harder to hold.

He also made the China file honest, and I’ll give him that without qualification.

Long-term risk runs through both files. I think a conventional desk with a harder China staff is available under Biden in a way that the noise isn’t available as a tool under Trump. That may be hope rather than analysis, and I’ll label it as hope.

On Iran I don’t trust either party to finish anything. I trust Trump more to refuse a bad deal and Biden more not to stumble into a headline war, which is a genuinely uncomfortable place to end up.

This table’s clean win for Trump on foreign policy is less clean than it sounds from a diner. The diner is right about the supply chain. The embassies are real too.