john pitt
Few European leaders have welcomed Donald Trump’s US election victory (Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is an exception). The fact that he will control not only the White House but also both Congress and the House of Representatives will in fact only make the Supreme Court more concerned about them. A free-wheeling, vengeful President with no worries about re-election could be a nightmare for Europe in three broad areas.
The first and most urgent thing is geopoliticsIn particular, the future security of Europe. Trump’s obsessive view that other NATO countries are not spending enough on defense, leaving the United States unfairly burdened with protecting Europe, is well known. The same goes for his confidence that he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine on his first day as president. Not surprisingly, many in Europe have concluded that Russia’s Vladimir Putin could be the biggest winner of a second Trump presidency and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky could be the biggest loser.
But this may prove too depressing. Since Trump’s previous term, most European countries have significantly increased their military spending (Poland now plans to spend a whopping 5% of its GDP on defense, a larger share than the United States). It has also long been clear that the United States is shifting its focus to containing China. As for Putin, it is true that Trump likes a strong leader, even if he is not democratically elected. But he also hates defeat, and a Russian victory in Ukraine would be a major defeat for the United States. What is clear is that Trump’s second presidency means Europe will have to do much more to defend itself.
The second thing I am concerned about is climate change. Europe has long been a pioneer in recognizing the reality of climate change and doing its best to combat it. But Trump’s skepticism about climate change was evident in his first term, when he unilaterally withdrew from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and that is unlikely to change. He is likely to withdraw from the Paris Agreement again early in his second term and is already promising to “drill” for more oil and gas. The mood among climate activists took a somber turn at this week’s COP 29 summit in Baku.
As it happens, the United States has recently been decarbonizing its economy as quickly as Europe and is likely to continue to do so despite Trump’s climate skepticism. The biggest driver is the unstoppable decline in renewable energy prices. But what remains worrisome is the message a second Trump presidency is sending to other carbon emitters, especially China and India. Combined pressure from the West has helped these countries take climate change more seriously. Those pressures will likely diminish dramatically once Trump becomes president for a second time.
The third problem related to Europe is trade and economy. Trump has frequently expressed his belief that ‘tariffs’ is the most beautiful word in the dictionary, and during his campaign he promised to impose tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on European exports and up to 60 percent on Chinese exports. For some measures, he may need congressional approval, but that won’t be automatic even if Republicans control both chambers. Litigation in U.S. courts could also be an obstacle. But the president has very broad powers to impose trade tariffs for security reasons, so Europe is right to expect him to do so.
Both experience and mainstream economic analysis confirm that trade wars are bad for everyone, including those who start them. Higher inflation and lower growth can therefore be expected on both sides of the Atlantic, exacerbated to some extent by efforts to tighten immigration. Nonetheless, there are reasons to worry that Europe will lose more than the United States from trade tariffs. Europe is more exposed to world trade than the United States and has large trade surpluses overall. Moreover, European economies are noticeably weaker than those of the United States, largely because Germany’s economic situation was so bad.
The footnote to this is about post-Brexit Britain. There are also claims that President Trump, who supported Brexit, prefers the UK over the European Union (EU) to the extent of exempting trade tariffs from his British friends and actively pursuing a bilateral free trade agreement. But the reality is that such a trade deal is unlikely to materialize and the UK will be a big loser in any trade war. Indeed, Britain could suffer more than most if a second Trump presidency accelerates the formation of a competitive global trading bloc. Even those who believe in Brexit may have to accept that with President Trump being elected again, it may have happened at the worst possible time.
John Peet is deputy editor of The Economist and a member of the advisory board of the UCL European Institute.
memo: The views expressed in this post are those of the author and not those of the UCL European Institute or UCL..
main image: American flag with flagpole by Brandon Day on Unsplash
