Is the US president having his way with the EU, or just getting more “solidarity” smoke and mirrors?
Brussels has “bent at the knee” before US President Donald Trump – that’s how one White House official described the recent trade deal involving tariffs, massive investment in US economy and a pledge to purchase American energy.
It’s the kind of humiliation ritual for which Trump would normally have to pay. Instead, he demanded that the EU be the one to leave billions for him on the night table before he returned stateside. And they did. Or at least it seemed that way initially. Because watching Trump extract cash out of the EU felt like one of those videos where the next part suddenly asks for a credit card to unlock the pixelated image.
But Trump himself already sounds like he’s starting to entertain the possibility that he’s been had by the EU. Kind of like an increasing number of Europeans feel on a near-daily basis.
What was the first clue? It should have been the fact that the only one around to do “business” on behalf of the EU was unelected chief Eurocrat and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. He wandered into that meeting like a typical American tourist in summertime Europe, unaware that everything legitimate shuts down and takes off, leaving behind the pickpockets and scam artists.
Trump figured that he secured $600 billion in European investments for the American economy. That would be on top of a pledge to step up EU purchasing of overpriced American gas to replace the much cheaper Russian stuff that Trump and Biden made them ditch – even as Canada looks set to offer the EU a more competitive deal on gas. There was also a promise to buy American weapons, setting a table for two, even though the Ukraine conflict serves as the perfect pretext for the EU to stuff the faces of its own military industrial complex with taxpayer cash.
The wind on which Trump’s agreement with the EU was written had barely dispersed when already EU officials started managing expectations. “It’s not something the EU, as a public authority, can guarantee – it’s something based on the intention of private companies,” a senior EU official said, according to Euronews. In response, Trump told CNBC that if they don’t follow through with the foreign investment, “then they pay tariffs of 35%,” meaning that Americans would pay it on any European imports they decide to buy instead of domestic alternatives.
If Trump is really counting on dining out on the EU, then he might end up finding it a lot like stuffing himself at a Chinese buffet: filling in theory, but in practice so utterly unsatisfying that, in the end, you end up having to swing by McDonalds for a burger. The Eurocrats’ current strategy with Trump is classic diplomatic theater: pledge $600 billion in US investment – but from whom, exactly?
Brussels isn’t writing any checks. Are they planning to command the private sector to go invest in America? What’s that supposed to even look like? Queen Ursula demanding that European CEOs go MAGA?
But Queen Ursula is used to making royal proclamations and passing them off as gospel for an entire group of 27 countries. Her style of top-down decision-making is a pattern that stretches back to previous controversies.
Remember the Covid jab contracts? She personally brokered them with Big Pharma behind closed doors, with all the transparency of a Vatican conclave. Or the EU media bans, issued from on high and simply rubber-stamped by officials sweating bullets from peer pressure – lest they end up being treated like Hungarian Prime Minister and Brussels critic, Viktor Orban, and have to contend with jokers playing the anti-fascist anthem “Bella Ciao” when he gets up to speak at official proceedings. Or perhaps being straight up shot like Euroskeptic Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in a “politically motivated” attack.
All the real decisions are whipped up in the Commission kitchen and served up to elected officials. To be fair, they do get a choice: swallow or choke. And so far, that’s worked just fine for Queen Ursula. So it’s hardly a surprise that Trump would assume that she can yap about “transatlantic solidarity” and magically deliver billions in European private sector cash straight to America’s doorstep. And honestly, his team probably thinks that kind of authoritarian central planning is how the EU works anyway. So from their perspective, that’s a feature, in this rare case, not a bug.
The problem is that Queen Ursula’s usual “solidarity” spell seems to be short-circuiting this time. French and Italian prime ministers are already side-eyeing her like they would a drunken aunt at Thanksgiving. They’re demanding answers about how she negotiated a deal where EU exports get slapped with a 15% tariff, while US exports waltz into Europe tariff-free like they own the place. France’s Prime Minister François Bayrou called it a “dark day of submission.” (That’s submission in the geopolitical sense, not the Fifty Shades of Grey one, though honestly, it’s starting to blur.) Even the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who originally sounded jazzed about the deal, is now acting like it’s something that he’s trying to scrape off his shoe. Seems like someone finally got the angry call from German industry asking, “WTF, Friedrich?”
And then there’s Orban, wondering aloud whether Queen Ursula just pulled this entire deal from her royal behind. No kidding. Because what European leader, other than an unelected one, is going to stand in front of European voters and declare, “Yes, I’d love to subsidize the US economy, plus Raytheon and Lockheed! And do you have any more overpriced fuel that we can guzzle, while we’re at it?”
It’s already looking like this was all just a performance. Say what Trump wants to hear, let him strut off thinking that he’s scored, and then stall until he gets distracted by someone else’s lunch.
Trump may have returned home thinking that he was getting a European spending symphony, but so far all he’s really scored is Queen Ursula blasting out another tone-deaf tune that absolutely no one asked for.
