Make America Great Again version 2.0 is upon us.
If Trump is to be believed, he intends to “end the Ukraine war in days” (ie abandon Kyiv to its Russian aggressors). He intends to weaken America’s security guarantee to Nato countries (which implies the end of the Atlantic alliance).
He intends to slap tariffs of at least 10 percent on all European exports (and place even higher duties on Chinese exports which may then flood into the EU market).
Listen to John and the team at The Local France talking about the Trump victory in the latest Talking France podcast - listen here or on the link below
Trumpworld is a world without international rules or commitments. It is diplomacy by gangsterism
In Trumpworld, the United States should have the right to pollute the planet as it pleases; to suck up international capital to fund its monstrous debt; and to damage and insult its friends while playing soft-ball with evil dictators.
Before MAGA version 1.0, Europeans could tell themselves that Trump’s rhetoric wouldn’t survive contact with reality. There would be grown-up conservatives within his administration to police him. He was a deal-maker. He would make deals.
Up to a point, that is what did happen. But almost all the “grown-up conservatives” who worked with Trump in 2017-2020 now refuse to work with him. One of them, his former Chief of Staff John Kelly, says that Trump can accurately be described as a “fascist” and that he intends to rule, second time around, as a dictator.
The US Senate and most likely the House of Representatives will be under Republican control. The Republican Party has sold its soul for power and will be under the control of Trump. Ditto, the US Supreme Court.
Checks and balances? The United States constitution and its democracy are about to be subjected to their greatest crash test since the American Civil War 160 years ago.
But so is Nato. And so is the European Union.
There was never a good time for Trump to return. But seen from the European side of the Atlantic, his victory in Tuesday’s presidential election could not have come at a worse time.
The EU is divided about its own future. Both of its largest and most influential countries, Germany and France, are struggling economically and enfeebled politically. Their “alliance” has become a talking shop which fails to solve their own quarrels, let alone impose direction on the EU-27.
European public opinion remains broadly pro-Ukraine but is bored with the war.
The far right is rising in almost all EU countries and will be emboldened by Trump’s victory, built partly on lies about immigrants. Trumponomics could plunge the world, and Europe, into a recession before it has properly recovered from the twin shocks of Covid and the Ukraine war.
The EU could face trade wars with both China and the US in the next couple of years as what remains of the world trading rules fall apart.
It is possible, therefore, to argue that Donald Trump might, paradoxically, be the saviour of the EU. Almost all the greatest European achievements have been forged in crisis.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been pleading with the other EU countries for seven years to accept that they must grasp their own destiny. They can no longer rely on Washington for their security. They will not survive as an industrial power unless they work together to invest in new technologies and defend themselves against Chinese, and yes American, commercial aggression.
Trump’s second coming means that Macron has, in effect, “won” that argument. But he is now a spent-force in France and has lost much of his political capital in Europe. The approaching crisis may, or may not, reinvigorate him.
Germany is also in the political and economic doldrums. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left-green-liberal coalition is falling apart. The far right AFD is rising.
Three of the four components of the “German model” have failed. There is no more cheap gas from Russia. China is no longer buying German hardware. The US security guarantee to Europe may soon end.
Only the fourth element - the EU and the European single market - remain. But Scholz’s Germany - and maybe all Germany - rejects most of Macron’s vision of a “sovereign” Europe.
Hundreds of billions of Euros of EU-guaranteed debt to rebuild European industry and defence capability? No thanks, that’s the French way, not the Germany way. Look where debt has got the French.
Creating a European defence force within Nato and maybe to replace Nato? Germany and the east European EU countries hate the idea. They want to cling on to nurse for fear of something worse – even now that nurse is wearing a red MAGA baseball cap.
Retaliate as one EU against American and Chinese trade protectionism? Or try to make separate deals?.
Trump will force the Europeans to confront all these issues in the next couple of years. Crisis may bring creativity and compromise. It has in the past.
But the EU needs its Franco-German “motor” or alliance to lead the way. And France and Germany are both weakened and pulling in opposite directions.
Ben McPartland, Editor, The Local Europe
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