By Tom Fowdy
Earlier this week, the European Union, led by the overwhelmingly pro-American Ursula Von Der Leyen, signed a controversial "trade deal" with the United States. The deal, largely done to appease Donald Trump's threat of imposing higher levies, agrees to a mutual 15% tariff rate. Similar to other deals the President has struck around the world, the EU has agreed to purchase over $750 billion worth of US natural gas and other energy projects, as well as to make punitively large investments in America itself.
This deal is not a victory, and it has been widely described as both a humiliation on the EU side and a mauling on the American side. French Prime Minister François Bayrou described it as a "dark day" for Europe and as "submission," Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever called out the "delusion of protectionism" while Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament's trade committee, said the deal is "not satisfactory," adding that "concessions have clearly been made that are difficult to accept." The headlines do not hold back either, with CNN declaring that "Trump bludgeoned the EU on trade," even as it stated it did not believe China would fold so easily.
It has been my argument for many years now that since the first Trump administration in 2018, the United States has actively sought to destroy the economic prosperity, autonomy, and industrial competitiveness of Europe, seeing it as a threat to its own geopolitical order and relevant industries. While we hear so much about "transatlantic relations" and "freedom," on a strategic level, the United States absolutely, yet implicitly, resents the idea of any ally that could be more powerful or successful than itself, especially when it concerns developing an industrial and technological base that outshines its own. The fundamental goal of the United States is to maintain its primacy as opposed to any altruistic belief in "values," and that applies to both friend and foe alike. Hegemony is a non-negotiable principle, and US foreign policy is ultimately about maintaining it at whatever cost, even if it means making some people poorer in the process.
Thus, throughout history, we see many efforts by Washington to actively hobble its allies and ensure that they are kept in a relationship of dependency, useful of course to American objectives, but never able to assert their own path or overtake. This was most famously done with Japan in the 1980s and the Plaza Accords, but in recent years, the US has grown in its resentment of Europe and its key industries, and cultivated policy goals to cut them down. We have seen multiple stories about how the United States has coordinated with European intelligence agencies to spy on their own national industries, as it did with Denmark and the Eurofighter program, or how such has been used to undercut critical EU industries such as Airbus, in favour of Boeing.
In tandem with this, the United States has also grown resentful that Europe has forged interdependent economic relationships with rival powers, such as Russia and China. Since 2018, US foreign policy at large has been focused on "geopolitical competition" on the economic level, actively breaking up and rolling back global economic integration so it can reassert control, unilaterally. Undermining Europe's energy ties with Russia has been a key goal of Washington, through both provoking and then prolonging conflict in Ukraine. By forcing Europe to submit to buying absurd amounts of overpriced US natural gas, the US has effectively strategically subjugated the European continent and is effectively forcing it back into the relationship of dependency it once enjoyed during the Cold War. Ursula Von Der Leyen seems happy to go along with this, regardless of what the leaders of its member states may think about the situation. Although we hear a lot about Trump depending Europe, or NATO, "pay its own way" in terms of defence spending, we should remind ourselves that the fundamental goal of Trump doing this is so European countries buy more European weapons. The narrative that the US is leaving or "abandoning Europe" in the name of "America First" is one pushed by transatlantic liberals, and it has no actual basis in reality. Hence, Trump doesn't abandon Ukraine; he just exploits the situation.
It is concerning, of course, the world over, that the answer to Trump's punitive tariffs seems to be just capitulation. Countries are giving the United States free market access upfront, while America reserves for itself a punitive tariff wall, all while being expected to make absurd investments or worse, anti-China commitments. All the behind-the-scenes leaks, from Vietnam to Japan and now, of course, to open disdain in Europe, decry these deals, yet they appear to go along with them anyway. Is the US market really that important? Is the solution really just to appease Trump?
Many countries openly stand to lose their own sources of prosperity by agreeing to these absurd, one-sided details, with China seemingly being the only country that is prepared to hold its own.
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Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | EU 'stuck between rock and hard place' with US and China
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