How Europe should prepare for the return of Donald Trump

How Europe should prepare for the return of Donald Trump

by Steven Hill
[This article posted on 10/30/2024 is available on the Internet, https://www.socialeurope.eu/how-europe-should-prepare-for-the-return-of-donald-trump.]

With the 2024 US election looming, Europe braces for a potential Trump return, preparing to safeguard stability and democracy.

The US presidential election is approaching fast, with much at stake. Opinion polls show a roller coaster race between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Concern is growing on both sides of the Atlantic that Donald Trump may soon return to the White House and rule with a vengeful wrath, further eroding America’s democratic institutions and engagement with the world.

There is no question that the Democratic and Republican candidates are offering two very different visions of America, indeed two different visions of the globalised world. Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, the economic populist Senator JD Vance from Ohio, see the world in black-and-white, disturbingly tracking who their enemies and friends are in the US, Europe and around the world. In the Trump brand of “transactional politics,” friends can include dictators and war criminals. Economic policy, trade, NATO, transatlantic relations, climate change, Ukraine, the Middle East, China, Viktor Orban, and digital security, all of these major policy dimensions will be dramatically impacted by a Trump return.

Trump’s far-right populist vision

Trump has said that if he is elected in November 2024, he will negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours.” He says he will also demand that Europe reimburse the US for ammunition used in Ukraine and kill Ukraine’s bid for NATO admission. Foreign policy expert Anne Applebaum says Trump may well abandon NATO entirely, and “faith in collective defense could evaporate quickly.”

On the domestic front, Trump has said he will lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy, withdraw from all climate agreements, and impose a 10 to 20 per cent tariff on all imports from Europe and other nations. That’s no small threat, since the EU’s $16 trillion economy is heavily reliant on trade with the US. The US is the EU’s biggest source of foreign direct investment, and the $1.3 trillion in trade between America and the EU is the largest bilateral trade and investment relationship in the world, 40 per cent greater than the EU’s trade with China.

In short, Trump threatens to further overturn the transatlantic relationship and the global order, even more than he did in his first administration. Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, says even Russian interference in American democracy didn’t stop Trump “from being less confrontational with Putin than with European leaders.” This time around, it will be the Donald 2.0 version. Rather than Trump having been chastened by the disaster of his first term, including a million dead from his administration’s poor handling of COVID, instead his recent speeches and social media messages show that he has become consumed by sociopathic fantasies of revenge and domination of anyone who does not genuflect to his authority – whether individuals or nations. He has said that in a second term, his alliances and appointments would be prized above all for their loyalty to his rule.

The Harris-Walz vision = Biden II

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, are on the other side of this battle royal. The Harris-Walz ticket offers a very different vision for America and its allies that can be summed up as Biden II, but with a few important differences.

Like the administration of President Joe Biden, a Kamala Harris presidency will be looking to uphold economic and national security alliances with Europe, NATO and other allies around the world, and to ensure US engagement on a global scale. She has espoused strong support for Ukraine in its defense against Putin’s invasion and seems to mostly adhere to the Biden foreign policy.

Harris’s views on trade policy and strategy are not exactly clear. She has been skeptical of so-called “free trade” agreements, including the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, and she was one of only ten senators to vote against the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Her objection to such trade deals has usually revolved around their projected impact on the environment, climate change and workers. Like many Democratic leaders, Harris seems to believe that free trade deals are a reason US companies have shipped many American jobs overseas.

And as vice president, Harris has been part of the administration’s push to lessen the dependence of supply chains on China. In negotiations with the EU, the Biden administration pushed for trade measures that would encourage makers of steel and aluminum to cut carbon emissions. Some trade analysts expect similar actions under a Harris administration that would seek to integrate trade with incentives for preferred climate and labor policies.

Domestically, with so many Americans concerned about the cost of living and their tenuous economic situations, Harris has been making campaign promises about lowering prices. Still, it’s not clear what a president can actually do. Harris is aiming her campaign at the middle class, proposing family-friendly policies such as up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers, paid parental leave, and more child care support. She also has focused a substantial part of her message on women voters. Harris has declared that she will reverse the Trump Supreme Court’s decision on abortion that overturned women’s federally protected reproductive rights, and has led to full abortion bans in 14 out of 50 states. But on this policy too, it’s not clear what a president can do, other than support ballot initiatives in states aimed at legalization.

Where a Harris administration may differ most from Biden is its support for anti-monopoly enforcement. The Biden administration has been trying to rein in Big Tech, digital platforms and other large American companies, with one federal court declaring Google a “monopolist.” Biden’s agencies have also taken action against price-fixing in the meat industry and filed a lawsuit to block the merger of supermarket giants and pressed grocery retailers to lower prices. Biden has revitalized antitrust enforcement and launched the biggest turnaround in competition regulation in three decades.

Harris has been known to be more accommodating toward corporations and Big Tech, with her brother-in-law being a top executive for Uber and now a close advisor to her campaign. Having a friend in the White House would be a huge asset to big business and Silicon Valley companies, just at a time when federal agencies, as well as states like California, are starting to crack down on their toxic “surveillance capitalism” business model.
How to Trump-proof Europe

If Kamala Harris is elected president, Europe can expect to have a solid ally in the White House. But what should the EU do if Trump gets elected?

Europe would have to “Trump-proof” itself by being more united than ever. It would have to fill the enormous American leadership void, helping Ukraine against Russia, promoting human rights, safeguarding its borders (including its digital borders), fighting climate change and championing democracy. Here are some key areas where the EU can prepare for the worst, even as they hope for the best:

Trade: The EU can shield itself from Trump’s protectionist policies by forging trade agreements with other nations and regional markets. It should also deepen its single market, particularly in the financial, digital, and service sectors. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde says a more robust single market that better ensures the free movement of goods, services, people and capital across 27 member states would make it easier for smaller companies to raise funding and “facilitate and encourage innovation.”

China: Trump might well threaten sanctions on major telecom operators who use Chinese equipment, so the EU should anticipate that possibility by reducing any critical dependencies on Chinese telecommunications products. Failure to do so might result in fragmentation of the EU telecommunications market.

Energy: While the share of EU pipeline gas imports from Russia declined from over 40 per cent to about 8 per cent in 2023, the imports of LNG gas from the US tripled to over 50 per cent of overall LNG gas imports. Might Trump pull a Putin on the EU? The EU must speed up its world-leading efforts at conservation and producing renewable energy.

Digital security: EU member states manufacture relatively few cloud-computing systems and telecommunications infrastructure. They depend heavily on both American and Chinese products. Fortunately, France, Italy, and Spain are leading in accessing cloud-computing services provided by firms headquartered in the EU. This goal should be accelerated.

Effective governance: Encouraged by Trump, Viktor Orban can be counted on to wield his frequent veto to undermine the EU. The EU needs to address institutional weaknesses that limit its ability to lead on the global stage, including requirements for unanimous vote approvals rather than majority votes. The EU will be hamstrung if its consensus requirements allow a single small country to block action by the whole.

Military and defense: This is a tricky one. A number of defense experts and strategists strongly recommend that Europeans “establish a level of military readiness it has not possessed since the Cold War” and become ”a strong actor, militarily.” However, the EU does not have a unitary federal government with a highly visible president who is viewed as the legitimate chief of the armed forces and whose military authority is recognized by all member states. So this sounds like wishful thinking. Nevertheless, Europe’s combined military and financial aid to Ukraine exceeds that of the US, and the EU’s role will be more effective if member states can unify the continent’s defense.

European values: Perhaps the most significant threat that Trump represents to the EU is to its values: multilateralism, environmental responsiveness, the rule of law, and democracy itself. Trump tramples on these principles through his actions and rhetorical attacks and sways public opinion. The EU needs to think hard about how, in order to withstand that pressure, it is necessary to defend the rule of law both inside and outside its borders.

In short, the EU member states would have to act as unified as possible. Does it have that capability?

Past crises have unified Europe

Europe has often needed a crisis to mobilize and, to some extent, unify its fractious member states. The European debt crisis in 2009-10 motivated the EU toward greater levels of federalism and to more fully integrate its banking systems. The immigration crisis in 2015-16 forced Europe to deal with its border issues and confront issues of member state solidarity. In the COVID-19 pandemic, member states empowered the EU Commission to buy vaccines, and for the first time, the Commission borrowed on a large scale to fund Europe’s economic recovery.

In a counter-intuitive way, Trump 1.0 galvanized Europe, spurring efforts toward greater self-reliance. Trump’s previous tariffs on EU steel and aluminum not only mobilized the EU to respond with tariffs on $3 billion worth of US goods, but also strengthened the euro by further integrating EU banks and financial systems. It led to the signing of trade agreements with new partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Trump’s threats over Europe’s defense spending levels nudged the EU to help reinvigorate NATO under the Biden administration and led to institutional incentives for member states to spend more on defense. In response to Trump, the EU created the European Peace Facility (EPF) that supports the armies of partner countries and EU member states with infrastructure, training and equipment. When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, the EPF was ready to provide military aid to Ukraine.

So, EU unity is the best remedy to any new round of Trump’s reckless brinkmanship. But what could incentivize more unity?

One possible unifying mechanism could be a mini version of the recently released Draghi plan for the EU to incur debt together as a way to build more defense capability. Most EU defense spending goes to the US, but member countries could favor the EU’s own arms industry when buying weapons. With money from shared European borrowing, the EU could afford its own defense and promote European cohesion through financial support for individual states in return for accepting conditions of fiscal responsibility. So, the potential election of Trump could become yet another incentive for greater European cohesion.

The US election is still some days away, so Europeans will have to wonder which president – and which America – will emerge this November. And what Europe will emerge in response.

Steven Hill

Steven Hill is author of Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age, a former journalist in residence at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and a former Holtzbrinck fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.