THE GUARDIAN: With its woeful trade deal, Europe prostrated itself before the president. We need a leader who will tell him where to shove it
Who remembers the spate of “introduction videos” that emerged during the first Trump administration – a series of tongue-in-cheek clips about European countries to introduce them to Donald Trump? The viral video trend was sparked by the Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach, who ended his segment on the Netherlands with: “We totally understand it’s going to be America first, but can we just say the Netherlands second?” It seems that Europe’s leaders remember the videos all too well; that they internalised the caustic message a little bit too much.
Afraid of rocking the boat during its trade negotiations with Trump, the EU decided to pre-emptively sink itself. Instead of strategic autonomy, it will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on American weapons; in place of future climate goals, it will pour hundreds of billions into US natural gas; instead of a mutual tariff reduction, it will take a huge unilateral hit to EU exporters; instead of self-respect, humiliating prostration.
The new trade “deal” announced by Trump and Ursula von der Leyen last month left a five-year-old’s worth of whys to ponder. Why does the EU, a colossus, think it is a mouse? Why is it content to merely nibble at the edges of power? Will it ever respect itself as much as China, which met Trump tariff for tariff until he backed off? Why don’t its politicians understand that voters want leaders who will defend them, and that, as for Canada’s Mark Carney and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, there are actually electoral rewards to be reaped by doing so without reserve? Why, even after Brexit, do they ignore the lesson that these same voters prioritise identity and emotion over cold economic rationality? » | Alexander Hurst | Wednesday, August 6, 2025
