The second coming of Donald Trump answers a question that many European officials have been asking since he was last in the White House: When it comes to America’s place in the world and its traditional role as the guardian of transatlantic stability, are his unorthodox views the exception or the rule?
In President Joe Biden, European allies have had a committed transatlanticist in the White House whose Cold War-era worldview sees Europe as a major pillar of US security and foreign policy. Trump has shown a willingness to throw out that playbook in favour of transactional deals in the name of putting "America first. "
After Biden won in 2020, he assured allies and warned adversaries that “America is back.” With Trump returning for a second term — and, unlike in 2016, with a majority of voters behind him — it may be more accurate to say that America never went away, but has changed. European allies have to again reckon with a US less willing to guarantee their physical security and more willing to challenge their economic security.
Despite the obvious angst that comes with contemplating that — if his campaign bluster is to be believed, the bloc is in for trouble when it comes to security and trade — there are pathways, however narrow or unintended, that some observers say could lead to a stronger EU.
“Europe is used to wanting predictability from the United States,” Ian Lesser, the head of the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels office, told The Parliament. “That is clearly not the hallmark of incoming President Trump, but this unpredictability can produce some surprising outcomes.”
Boosting defence, this time with feeling
For European defence hawks, Trump’s ambiguous position on NATO and US security guarantees is useful ammunition in their effort to build home-turf deterrence that can be taken seriously even without an American shield. Spending more on the military predates Trump’s political career, yet he’s made burden-sharing part of his brand.
This was already a pressure point for European allies during his first term, and European defence budgets got a boost partly as a result. French President Emmanuel Macron has been talking up “European sovereignty” since at least 2017 and made his famous “brain dead” remark about NATO two years later. It reflected the Euro-Atlantic military alliance’s lack of purpose some 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which it was founded to confront.
“The kinds of challenges that the incoming Trump administration is likely to present to the European Union are, in a way, reinforcing debates that were already well underway,” Lesser said. "The incoming administration has an opportunity to shake things up for Europe.”
Trump’s return, in combination with Russia’s ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine, is forcing Europeans to take his bad-cop stance more seriously.
“Trump wanted to convince people that there could be a time when Europe would be alone and it would face a significant security challenge,” Daniel Benjamin, president of the American Academy in Berlin, told The Parliament. “It does seem like those two things have made a big difference to continental thinking about defence.”
Twenty-three of 32 NATO allies have met the alliance’s guideline of spending at least 2% of GDP on military budgets. For the remaining stragglers, or those — such as Germany — that may fall back under the line due to spending cuts or economic contraction, Trump’s negative reinforcement could offer the “urgency that it otherwise might not have had” to keep the defence euros flowing, Benjamin said.
Trading on strengths
What the EU historically lacks in war-fighting prowess it makes up for in commercial heft. As a single market of advanced economies, it has been able to make favourable trading rules and enforce market regulations that the whole world — including the US — follows.
That power, however, rests on the assumption that others are open for business. Trump has been at the centre of a groundswell of blowback against free-trade orthodoxy. The tariffs he targeted China with during his first term, which Biden kept in place, could be a preview of what’s in store for the EU for his second. During the election campaign, Trump floated tariffs of up to 20% for all imports and higher ones targeting China.
Those plans would escalate trade tensions between the US and EU, which carried out tit-for-tat tariffs in 2018 on steel and aluminium.
In many ways, the EU is ill-prepared for a trade war with a major trading partner and leading global power. Economic growth has largely stalled, foremost in the bloc’s biggest economies, and top officials are fretting over a competitiveness crisis as the US and China race to dominate future-facing sectors like AI, battery storage and electric vehicles.
“It's hard to find a lot of good news,” Lesser said, but noted the potential for a silver lining: “A lot of the things that the Trump administration cares most deeply about, in policy terms, will inevitably involve the European Union.”
China stands out on that policy list. Trump’s stated desire to contain it will likely have more success with the EU on board. Considering the bloc's €739 billion in trade with China in 2023 and a much smaller strategic footprint than the US has in the Indo-Pacific, the EU may need some convincing. That could give the bloc some leverage, if it can convince Trump that his economic efforts against China will have more success with the cooperation of one of the world’s largest single markets.
“This might turn out to be more bluff and bluster than reality,” Lesser said, referring to Trump’s tariff threats directed at the EU. “It's a kind of opening gambit in search of what he might describe as, quote-unquote, a better deal.”
Even if tariffs do come knocking on Brussels’ door, they are likely to be lower than any additional ones levied against China. The EU could stand to benefit, even if accidentally, “because European products in relation to Chinese products would be less expensive than they were before,” James Davis, a political science professor at Switzerland's University of St. Gallen, told The Parliament.
In other words, a tariff-wielding Trump could be bad for the EU, but even worse for China, giving the former an edge in global competition.
It takes two to make a deal, as the president who wrote a book about the “art” of it knows. When the EU sits down at the negotiating table, it holds cards, too. In congratulating Trump on his reelection, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hinted at these, reminding the US president-elect that “millions of jobs and billions in trade and investment on each side of the Atlantic depend on the dynamism and stability of our economic relationship.”
In their dealings with Trump, it will be incumbent upon EU policymakers to remember those strengths, as the “outcome of these things has to do with how people respond to Trump,” Davis said. “There are more clever and less clever ways to respond to things."