Trump 1.0: Liaisons dangereuses

By the spring of 2018, it was clear that Europe’s efforts to seduce, educate and impress the president had come to nothing. The harder its leaders pressed, the more abrasive he became. Trump looked at the world, as he put it, “from a real-estate perspective”, and because he was entirely unapologetic about who he was, he could neither be reasoned nor shamed into becoming someone else.

Two Atlantic summits made clear the rupture was definitive. First, the infamous G7 summit on 8–9 June 2018 in Québec, at which Trump threw his Starburst candies at Merkel, walked out of the meeting, and later withdrew his signature from the communiqué. It had seemed as if Trump had come to the summit, which was meant to be about trade, for an entirely different reason: to raise a stink and pull the United States out of the G7 altogether.

The second Atlantic summit took place at NATO’s HQ in Brussels on 11–12 July 2018, and it proved that the bottom had still not been reached. If there was a certain parity in size on trade between Europe and the US, in the area of security and hard power it was a different story. For years, most European countries had fallen well short of their commitment under NATO agreements to earmark at least 2 per cent of GDP in their budget towards defence expenditure. Moreover, since in contrast to their trade policies EU member states had always kept control over their own national defence structures, Europe’s military capabilities remained fragmented and weak. It formed a perfect whipping tool in the hands of Trump.

When Europe’s leaders arrived in Brussels, they looked like supplicants summoned for a dressing down by their biggest and most indispensable benefactor. Realizing they had failed to make good on their promises, their fate seemed uncertain.

Within minutes of the summit kicking off in the morning of 11 July it became clear there would be no escape. It began with a bilateral working breakfast between Trump and Stoltenberg. Television cameras were present to record the initial exchange of pleasantries between the men. But there was nothing pleasant about Trump that morning, who instantly lashed out at Nord Stream 2, the German-Russian gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. “I think it’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where you’re supposed to be guarding against Russia”, the president said, leaving Stoltenberg to stare blankly at his toast and orange juice. “So, we’re supposed to protect Germany when they’re getting their energy from Russia? Explain that.”¹

It was the start the Europeans had hoped to avoid but was inevitable. Trump continued his assault later that day: “The US is paying for Europe’s protection, then loses billions on trade”.² “Must pay 2% of GDP IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025”, he tweeted.³ The G7 could perhaps continue as the G6, but it was hard to see how NATO could continue without the US. Europe depended on Washington for its protection. And with a president in the White House who regarded diplomacy as a real estate deal, it meant America would be exacting a price, on trade, gas deals and much more. 

Europe needed a change of plan, to rethink its political calculations. It would need to deal with Trump as he was and would always remain, a rival and foe.

Two impulses fought to prevail on the continent. First, the idea of keeping one’s head down, of “riding it out”, in the hope that Trump would be impeached by Congress or voted out of office in 2020 or at the latest in 2024.

The second impulse was that if Europe could not protect itself now, it needed to get ready to do so in the future. It needed to end its dependency, and begin to act like a sovereign power itself, to “take its destiny in its own hands”, as Merkel argued in speeches and rallies. 

However, the idea of a “sovereign” or “strong” Europe required a fundamental change to how the continent projected itself in the world, a change of language also. It was the sort of change that could hardly be grasped, let alone achieved, in one electric jolt of conceptual clarity. Europe’s sovereignty and strength needed to be achieved in response to concrete events, moments and encounters, in the political back and forth between action and reaction.

Trump’s decision in May 2018 to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan for Action, was one such moment. When the US announced harsh new economic sanctions against Iran, the EU responded with defiance, announcing plans to shield its trading relations with Iran from US sanctions. Pacta sunt servanda, it argued, hoping it would suffice for Tehran to continue to hold up its part of the nuclear bargain. It proved an uphill battle. Would European firms and banks continue to do business with Iran if they risked getting caught in the net of US sanction law? As one by one its companies chose to play it safe, the EU seemed powerless to stop them. 

What was new, however, and historically remarkable, was Europe’s decision to strike out on its own: to not just politely disagree with the US, but to expressly and vocally set out to undermine its foreign policy. There was readiness, shared by the UK, to enter into a contest with the US that had not existed before. When EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was asked about Washington’s power to block European businesses from trading with Iran, she answered with resolve: “[N]o sovereign country or organization can accept that somebody else decides with whom you are allowed to do trade with.”⁴ The US should not be allowed to become “the trade policeman of the world”, agreed Macron’s finance minister, Bruno Le Mair.⁵

Trump’s ambassador in Brussels poked fun at the EU’s rebellion, describing its efforts to insulate its firms against US sanctions as “a paper tiger”.⁶ John Bolton called the EU “strong on rhetoric and weak on follow-through”.⁷ They were not wrong. But they glossed over the politically important point, which was that the EU had turned to such hostile language at all. On Iran, Europe now toed a common line with Russia and China, agitating against US foreign policy. The decision acknowledged the growing distance and enmity between former friends.

Europe’s trade diplomacy with Trump was moving in novel directions too. On 25 July 2018, just weeks after the calamitous NATO summit, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker travelled to Washington for the continent’s next encounter with Trump.

The former prime minster of Luxemburg had so far played a backseat role in Europe’s encounter with Trump, leaving Merkel, Macron and May to do most of the heavy lifting. But when Juncker arrived in Washington, his mind was clear and focused. He had not travelled that far just to give the president another lecture in international trade law. He had come to negotiate something. He was Europe’s designated player, and he had come for one reason: to cut a deal. 

This shift from form to substance was important. Rightly, it was controversial. Europe agreed to negotiate in Trump’s language of strength, abandoning its language of rules. Until then, the EU had refused to make deals on trade with Trump for reasons of principle. Before any deals could be made, the EU’s position had been, the US needed to withdraw its WTO-noncompliant punitive tariffs on steel and aluminium. It needed to stop threatening Europe with illegal penalties on imported cars. No negotiations with guns on the table, Macron had been adamant. Trump first needed to acknowledge the world’s trade rules.

But in Washington Juncker abandoned the high ground. “I came for a deal – we made a deal”, he said after a three-and-a-half-hour meeting. It is “a very big day for free and fair trade, a very big day indeed”, Trump stated for his part.⁸

Off the record, EU officials did their best to downplay Juncker’s achievement. The deal hardly had substance, they clarified. The talks had just been “talks about talks”. But the great significance of the deal was that finally Europe had done what Trump had insisted on: it had traded the language of rules with that of raw sovereign power, of pure market size. The continent had patently failed to convince Trump to stick to the rules. It now saw no alternative but to resort to the president’s so-called art of the deal. In the Trumpian idea of the deal, negotiating with proverbial guns on the table – and occasionally with real guns, too – was just how one negotiated, and how Europe had to negotiate too if it wanted to protect its interests.

Juncker’s deal with Trump had all the hallmarks of personal diplomacy. Its terms were elusive. Detailed commitments were lacking, just as they had been lacking after Trump’s nuclear parley with North Korea’s Kim, one month earlier. Had anything been agreed at all, Europeans wondered? Normal EU trade deals involved wordsmithing and binding assurances. But this was the parley, and how Trump conceived of political deals between sovereign powers. The US president retracted his threat of punitive tariffs on cars, while Juncker committed Europe to buying more US soya beans. The only glue that held the agreement together were Trump’s and Juncker’s words.