When Donald J Trump walked down the gold-plated elevator at his New York Trump Tower in June 2016 to announce his candidacy for presidency of the United States, hardly any European leader –not to mention many in his own country—took him seriously.
Written by Peyman Pejman
Except one: Hungary’s former strongman and long-time Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
“Prime Minister Orbán used to say we were Trump before Trump,” reminisced Márton Ugrosdy, who served as Deputy State Secretary at Orbán’s office from 2022 to 2026. When Trump ran for office, Orbán was all in supporting the candidate.
Orbán and his administration were already upset by what they saw as the Obama administration’s constant pro-democracy push in Hungary. Relations worsened during Joe Biden’s presidency after Trump’s first time in office.
“Under the Biden administration, relations were stormy. US ambassador (David Pressman) tried to interfere in Hungarian internal affairs every day. You can do it but not every day and on that scale. At the end of the day, you are a guest of the host country. It was very harmful,”
adds Dávid Nagy, a political analyst, security and defense policy expert at Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation, which was partially funded through pro-Orbán organizations and networks.
Since coming to office, much has been written about the Orbán-Trump relationship.
The US-Hungary relationship changed “in the last 10 years mainly because the relationship was not a classical diplomatic line but more ideological because Orban’s foreign policy was personalized and served power interest rather than national interest,” Zsuzsanna Szelényi, director of the Democracy Institute Leadership Academy for Central and Eastern Europe at the Central European University (CEU).
“The relations became more Orbán-Trump, not Hungary-US.”
Szelényi spoke to Daily News Hungary on the sidelines of the Budapest Forum, organized by CEU on October 1.
But Orbán is no longer the prime minister and Trump will constitutionally have to leave office on Jan 20, 2029. So, what’s next? What will the relationship look like under Péter Magyar premiership? What will each side want from the other partner?
The answer is not clear cut and depends on with whom you talk but there are commonalities regardless of political ideology. Short answer: expect neither a miracle nor a tragedy. But the longer answer is more nuanced.
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Diplomatic and economic relations between Hungary and the United States go back to 1921. To judge the relations, or predict their future, based on Trump-Orbán relations might not pass historical scrutiny.
“Hungary was interesting in the 90s because of the Balkan war. At the time Hungary was not even a NATO member but it was interesting because the US could use Hungarian (military) bases for bombings in the Balkans. That’s how Hungary got on the US map,” adds Nagy. During the 2003 US-led operation to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, Hungary contributed non-combat support.
Europe –including Hungary—have so far stayed out of the US-Iran war, despite Trump having complained on multiple occasions about Europe not “helping.”
Military cooperation aside, at least for now, prospects for warm and fuzzy diplomatic relations also seem to be farfetched.
“What I see is that if there is nothing special in Hungary, we just don’t matter because we are a small country in the middle of Europe with no strategic importance,” says Ugrosdy. What could that special thing be? “Aside from ideology, not much!”
There is disagreement on whether Prime Minister Magyar’s stated goal of wanting to mend relations with the European Commission after years of friction with Orbán could prove an obstacle in the US-Hungary relations.
Ugrosdy thinks Magyar will likely bow to pressure from the Commission leadership and several anti-Trump EU presidents by keeping his distance from Washington unless needed otherwise. CEU’s Szelényi disagrees.
“Every European country has some relations with the United States, especially NATO countries so that is not unique to the Hungarian foreign ministry. It is very important for the Hungarian administration to convey that Hungary will be a faithful partner in NATO and the EU and NATO is also the US. I don’t see any special conflict,” says Szelényi.
Economics and trade relations might be the wild card in the US-Hungary relations.
The exact amount of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by the US government and US companies in Hungary is not clear because of accounting method differences between organizations such as the Magyar National Bank, the US Department of State, and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Roughly speaking, the US has invested about $9.5 billion in Hungary since 1989, with 2025 reportedly seeing the largest amount. According to the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency (HIPA), 16 major US companies announced $480 million new investments in 2025, potentially creating 800 high-value-added jobs. According to figures by the International Trade Administration, a US government entity, US wholly owned and “affiliate” companies, employ 110,000 Hungarians.
Will the Magyar government be able, or be interested, to maintain high-level US investments?
“American companies did not come here because they like us politically. They came here because the business environment was good for them. Energy prices were low, low corporate income tax, cheap and available labor. As long as those factors are here, they might be interested in keeping their projects but if the energy prices go up or the corporate taxes go up, they will leave,” says Ugrosdy.
Szelényi also points out that the two countries still have a chance to renegotiate the abrogation of the double taxation treaty between the two countries which went into effect in on January 1, 2024, and canceled the 1979 agreement which benefitted many American companies because of low corporate tax rate in Hungary.
Under current rules imposed by the European Union, companies with group revenue above €750 million are already subject to a global minimum tax of 15 percent. Should the Magyar government try to tweak Hungary’s rates, it could adversely affect American and multinational companies.
Few, whether in Hungary or the United States, think Magyar will compensate for Orbán’s close relationship with the Trump administration and his extreme conservative, right-wing MAGA supporters by reaching out particularly to the Democratic establishment and the progressive wing of Democrats in America.
“The new government recognizes that it has different geopolitical views than the White House but I don’t think Magyar is going to champion progressive causes. He is essentially conservative. He came from the Fidesz political group. So I don’t see too much turbulence in the Washington-Budapest relationship,” says Robert Benson from the left-leaning Center for American Progress in the United States.
If you missed it: Watch here: Hungarian foreign minister Anita Orbán speaks to CNN about changes under new government
Hungarians concur.
“He (Magyar) claims to be a conservative politician so for me it would be strange if he reached out to the AOC progressives or donors like (Hungarian-born US billionaire philanthropist) George Soros,” says Ugrosdy, referring to progressive US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Soros has been a major donor to Democrat-supported and liberal-progressive causes, institutions and civil society organizations, including the CEU. “I don’t think any further outreach is necessary.”
While Magyar’s inclination would likely be stabilizing relations with Washington and not revolutionizing it, Orbán’s shadow could still loom large, maybe even with help from the Trump administration.
Orbán and his allies established, funded, and nurtured numerous conservative organizations and think tanks in Europe and maintained solid ties with similar groups in the United States. Much of his financial support was financed with Hungarian taxpayer money, although his affluent business and ideological allies also contributed. It remains to be seen how viable those funding mechanisms will be.
Benson, from the Center for American Progress, says the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor has a $5 million grants budget from which European organizations and think tanks allied with the Trump administration can benefit. He questions whether Orbán can be influential in funneling some of that money into organizations he supported before.
“I think it would be important for Orbán to nurture these international illiberal networks which he was building so carefully over 10 years and he probably hopes that if he can maintain it might help him to come back to power again, but that is my personal evaluation,” says Szelényi.
As we wrote earlier, Hungary seeks US exemption from Russian energy sanctions during transition
