Trump’s tariffs are only the beginning of his war on a Europe living on borrowed time
A central assumption of American policy since 1945 has been the understanding that Western and Eastern Europe must be supported. American spending and expertise underpinned victory in the Cold War, and the partnerships between Germany and the US and Britain and the US, under the umbrella of Nato, were cornerstones of American policy. The creation and maintenance of a peaceful, prosperous Europe was a key aim in Washington from Truman in the 1940s to George W. Bush in the early 2000s. Although there were moments of crisis, and stress and strain, the core commitment to an alliance with a free Europe persisted.
We need to wake up to reality. Those days are over.
The process of US disengagement and withdrawal from Europe began under President Obama, who covered it all up with a lot of windy speechifying as he pivoted to the Pacific. Donald Trump’s presidency has accelerated the process dramatically, altering the dynamic in ways we are only beginning to understand.
Today, Trump’s tariffs on steel are the big news. The EU, the Canadians, the French and the British have condemned it in strong terms. Trump shrugs and tweets about “FAIR TRADE” by which he does not mean ethically-sourced bananas.
This tariff war is being seen primarily as a nativist signal designed to please voters in the industrial heartlands of the US. Taking on China, which has – lets face it – taken the piss on intellectual property and the rest for several decades, makes sense. Yet it is also a signal to Europe that when Trump said America First he meant it.
There is much more to come. Wilbur Ross, the US commerce secretary, writing in the Financial Times this week issued a warning on technology and GDPR, the European Union’s stringent, complex and confusing new set of rules on data protection. Ross’s piece was polite and well-argued but laden with menace.
“GDPR creates serious, unclear legal obligations for both private and public sector entities, including the US government,” Ross wrote. “We do not have a clear understanding of what is required to comply. That could disrupt transatlantic co-operation on financial regulation, medical research, emergency management co-ordination, and important commerce.”
GDPR can be implemented, suggests Ross, but it is a mess and the Americans need answers – quick.
You can imagine what Trump’s view will be if he ever hears about this GDPR thing. American business is spending billions complying with a bunch of European rules on data privacy? The tweets would not be supportive.
That is to come. The tariff and trade war between America and Europe is happening now. In self-obsessed Brexit Britain, this is all seen through the prism of a future trade deal, with Remainers shouting that it proves there will be no deal with the US or anyone else, and Brexiteers are idiots and we should have stuck with the EU, and so on, and so on, endlessly.
However, forget the Leaver and Remainer navel-gazing. Much more is at stake. Potentially, we are headed for the collapse of Nato as we know it, amid a juddering realisation that Europe has enjoyed the protection of an American security blanket and done far too little recently in terms of its own defence.
In that spirit, Trump appears to be working up to a much bigger attack on Europe this summer. The US President has given plenty of warnings to Europe that he has had it on defence spending, pointing out that hardly anyone here hits the 2% of GDP as defence spending target. Last year, only the UK, Greece, Romania, Estonia and Poland spent 2%. Germany is at 1.2% and even its tents don’t work.
This concern about capability is going to move front and centre this summer, with the next Nato summit scheduled to take place in Brussels on the 11th and 12th of July. American support for Europe has been with us so long that we take it for granted.
What will Trump do? The UK government’s fear, I’m told, is that he will make a dramatic move, such as laying down a bold ultimatum and even making a pledge to withdraw from Nato unless everyone hits 2% by a set date soon. The aim will be to shock the Europeans into taking up much more of the burden of European defence, relaxing the pressure on the US and meaning it can spend more elsewhere.
No, this is not about Brexit. There is more to life. But the EU is a joke on defence and security and intelligence, and it is not a suitable forum for a coordinated response to these grave challenges. The increasingly deranged European Commission, which is starting to resemble the French government before 1939 in terms of sheer delusion, is right now (against the wishes of some member states) trying to exclude the UK from the Galileo satellite project. That’s right, it is trying to punish Europe’s leading security and intelligence power, at a moment when Europe is vulnerable to Russian and Chinese hybrid warfare and the EU says it wants British help.
Indeed, on multiple fronts this has been a week of peak Eurofanatic idiocy amid the Italian crisis. A German MEP said that Italy can go bust and then the “Troika” (Germany in effect) can march into Rome and take over Italy’s finance ministry. Jean Claude Juncker, the President of the Commission, said that Italians need to work harder (quite something coming from him) and be less corrupt.
What a bunch. It should be obvious that any European army run by this lot – put together by an organisation led by the Cognac specialist Juncker and his ghastly federalist sidekick Martin Selmayr – will be about as much practical use in military terms as a chocolate teapot. The nation states that do defence, primarily France, and a weakened Britain, in alliance with others, need to step up.
Let’s all, Eurosceptics and Europhiles, take a deep breath and consider the possibility that Europeans both outside and inside the EU, perhaps through a reconstituted Nato or a new organisation, need to find fresh ways of thinking about our collective security and defence. America no longer has Europe’s back.