Trump’s foreign policy shakes EU foundations

Urgent policy action is needed to protect the EU from Trump’s protectionist foreign policy and rescue a West increasingly beholden to China and Russia, writes Judy Dempsey 

The years after the devastating Second World War shaped the cooperative relationship between the US and Europe. Washington launched the German Marshall Fund to put what was then Western Europe back on its feet. 

Inspiring European figures led by French foreign minister Robert Schuman, and supported by the US, founded the European Coal and Steel Community—the precursor to today’s European Union (EU).

This was a special era. For Europe, after the nightmare of the Holocaust and Nazism followed by Stalinism, it was about forging an ideology based on peace, democracy, economic prosperity and integration—all in a divided Europe. 

In Washington, multilateral institutions prospered. They included the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, and US support for United Nations (UN) bodies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organisation and other multilateral agencies. 

More recently, the US, the EU and many other countries ‘updated’ their approach to multilateralism with the signing of the Paris Agreement. This legally binding international treaty on climate change was adopted by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2016. 

By contrast, US President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech this year dispensed with aspects of multilateralism and cooperation, making transnationalism and bilateralism his administration’s leitmotiv. 

Trump has walked away from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organisation, and intends to slap heavy tariffs on EU exports to the US unless, of course, European companies move across the Atlantic…or Europeans buy more American energy…or Europeans spend a whopping five percent of their gross domestic product on defence to take on the costs of their own security. 

They will also be encouraged to buy American military equipment.

Most European leaders have professed shock at Trump’s pronouncements—as if they didn’t know what to expect. They say they want to get on with the new US administration, but on what basis? Trump is no admirer of the EU. He challenges the bloc’s ideological edifice, built on accountability, the rule of law and fundamental values such as an independent media, an independent judiciary, human rights and asylum—and multilateralism.
 
These qualities don’t have a ‘shop price’. Trump’s policies do. His focus is on deals and trade-offs. 

This may suit some EU countries, such as Hungary and Slovakia, whose leaders are pro-Putin—although it is worth noting here that Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is becoming a hub for Chinese investments which may not please Trump. 

There is also Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the only European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration. She could be pivotal in making the EU-US relationship constructive.

Further, European countries are unprepared to strategically work together for their collective security, whether or not they are neutral. Russia’s war on Ukraine should have provided adequate warning to European countries, particularly Germany, to prepare for Europe’s security, the security of Ukraine and their eastern neighbours. It hasn’t.

With some exceptions, European countries such as Poland, Denmark and the Nordic states understand the threats posed by Russia. The same cannot be said for the European perception of Trump’s new ‘transactional’ administration which lacks the post-1945 focus on Atlanticism. Instead, Europe’s liberal elites continue to resort to their complacent comfort zones. 

Criticising Trump does not provide the basis for concrete policy safeguarding multilateralism, protecting Europe and rescuing a West increasingly beholden to China and Russia. Who in Europe is taking the lead?

Judy Dempsey is Non-resident Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe

*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column published in the February/March 2025 issue of Accountancy Ireland are the author’s own. The views of contributors to Accountancy Ireland may differ from official Institute policies and do not reflect the views of Chartered Accountants Ireland, its Council, its committees or the editor.