Oren Dorell

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Foreign leaders who harshly criticized Donald Trump's world views earlier this year have clammed up now that he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — and someone they may have to deal with if he winds up in the White House.

That doesn’t mean they no longer worry about many Trump positions, such as his proposals to build a wall along the southern border and make Mexico pay for it, temporarily ban Muslims from entering the USA and force foreign governments to pay more for U.S. troops stationed in their countries.

They realize they need to protect their relationship with the world’s most powerful nation by no longer airing their grievances as publicly as before.

President Obama underscored their concerns — expressed privately — when he said Thursday that the leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Japan are “rattled” by the prospect of a Trump presidency.

“A lot of the proposals he has made display either ignorance of world affairs, or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines,” Obama said as he met with government heads from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom for their annual two-day event.

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Many leaders, who criticized Trump from December through March, are concerned about Trump’s disdain for free trade agreements negotiated by Obama and past administrations, and his pledge to renegotiate defense agreements to make allies in East Asia and Europe “pay their fair share.”

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Many of those critics, however, have hushed or shifted to a more conciliatory tune. All embassies contacted for this story by USA TODAY declined to comment on the record.

Trump responded to Obama's remarks Thursday, telling reporters in Bismarck, North Dakota, that "when you rattle someone, that’s good."

"If they’re rattled in a friendly way that’s a good thing…not a bad thing,” Trump said. "(Obama) is a man who shouldn’t be really airing his difficulties. ... He has not done a good job."

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Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who’d criticized Trump’s stance to ban Muslims earlier in the campaign, talked instead of common interests in early May.

Asked how he would deal with a President Trump, who rejects the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Trudeau said trade is key to the shared goals of growth and prosperity. "The level of integration between the Canadian and American economies is unlike anything else ... in the world," he said in Ottawa, according to Reuters.

Irish Prime Minister Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who called Trump’s pledge to ban Muslims “unacceptable” in December, told RTE News May 19 that while Trump had made some “very provocative remarks,” it would be inappropriate for him to say who should win the U.S. election.

“The world will have to work with whatever president there is and given our traditional association with the United States we will manage to do that,” Kenny said.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan, a critic in December, has been mum about the business tycoon so far this month.

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, a former ambassador to Washington, reflected much of the world’s puzzlement with Trump’s success so far on May 5 during a dinner for the Washington Institute on Near East Policy. But unlike other Saudi leaders earlier in the campaign, he only offered friendly support to his American friends.

“For the life of me, I cannot believe that a country like the United States can afford to have someone as president who simply says, ‘These people are not going to be allowed to come to the United States,’” Turki said. “It’s up to you, it’s not up to me. I just hope you, as American citizens, will make the right choice in November.”

But there have been a few exceptions. Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said on May 22 he stands by his criticism in December that Trump's proposed Muslim ban was "divisive, stupid and wrong”, and went a step further, saying Trump's ideas are also “dangerous." Yet a Cameron spokesperson told the Independent the prime minister would meet Trump if he becomes the official Republican nominee.

Another notable exception to the caution shown around the world has been in Mexico, where the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto has launched a campaign to counter damage it attributes to Trump’s candidacy.

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On May 5, after other Republican candidates pulled out of the race, Nieto’s undersecretary for population, migration and religious affairs, Humberto Roque Villanueva, said his government was mobilizing to deal with what it calls “The Trump Emergency,” which it considers a “threat” to Mexico’s relationship with its number one trade partner, according to Fox News Latino.

Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said on May 13 that Mexico would fight Trump’s “xenophobic, or racist, or uninformed positions with information, not adjectives,” according to the Associated Press.

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Ian Brzezinski, a NATO analyst at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C., said European leaders and diplomats have told him of their worries about Trump’s isolationism, aversion to free trade, disregard for human rights, and “his fire-and-forget approach to military force.”

Central Europeans are worried about a potential reset with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump has called “a strong leader,” and his lack of interest in Ukraine, which Russia invaded, Brzezinski said.

Aaron David Miller, a Middle East analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said foreign leaders who once viewed Trump with disbelief are "starting to settle in, in shock, on the idea that Trump could be the candidate."

He expects some public comments to resume when the primary-season ends and the election nears. But mostly foreign leaders “don’t want to behave like Trump, carry on a twitter war over a six- to eight-month period,” he said. “Why would that be in anyone’s interest?”

Brzezinski agreed, saying leaders are hearing from their embassies in the U.S. that Trump could be the next president. “So why blast away at somebody that could be your next partner, someone who could be the next leader of the free world,” he said.