Europe First

Dear Mr President,

We need to talk. We have watched your second term for more than 60 days. Since the 20th of January, you, Mr. Donald Trump, champion of workers, farmers and billionaires alike, have turned the global security and trade architecture of the past decades on its head.

You announced tariffs only to delay them shortly after, suddenly implement them and then drop them entirely. The Gulf of Mexico now goes by the Gulf of America at your request, and on the ruins of the Gaza Strip, you want to build the new Riviera of the Middle East.

We, too, have ended up in the crosshairs: Your administration wants to slap European goods that Americans like with 200 per cent tariffs – wine, champagne and spirits. The ‘peacemaker and unifier’ you described yourself as in your inaugural address on 20 January in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, we have yet to catch a glimpse of.

And yet the criticism from politicians on our side of the Atlantic remains frustratingly timid. Outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz calls your erratic tariff policy ‘wrong’. His likely successor, Friedrich Merz, thinks tariffs are ‘never a good idea’. The Oval Office catastrophe between Volodymyr Zelensky and yourself, the CDU chief called ‘not helpful to the cause’. And EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen finds the tariffs on European goods no more than ‘bad for business’.

But the time for harmless, overly diplomatic sentences is over. Your Vice President JD Vance was right when he said on Fox News that Europe must ‘respect its own people’ and ‘its own sovereignty’. America could not do that job for them – and it does not have to. We are happy to take over.

And to think the relationship between our two continents was so close over the past centuries. We were exemplary allies. Your great-grandfather had not yet been born (in a European Germany, by the way) when France gave the United States a gift for the centenary of the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776: a 46-metre copper statue called Liberty Enlightening the World.

With her seven-rayed crown and gilded torch, the figure of the goddess Libertas still presides over New York harbour to this day, clearly visible to the millions of immigrants who once waited on neighbouring Ellis Island for permission to enter the USA.

This statue, Mr Trump, do you still want it? Because we think it no longer quite fits into the USA of your making.

Our colleague, the French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, found clear words when he said your administration had ‘chosen to side with the tyrants’. At a conference of his centre-left party Place publique, he said of the copper goddess:

Perhaps, we should take this gift back.

You know a thing or two about marketing. Surely you are also familiar with the expression ‘fight fire with fire’. It means fighting your opponent with his own weapons. And we, dear Mr Trump, are about to start doing just that.

Protectionist Foreign Policy

America remained indispensable as Europe’s best friend for a long time, primarily because it held its protective umbrella of fighter jets, ground troops and nuclear intercontinental missiles over us. You have de facto cancelled that guarantee.

Understood. To protect Europe’s eastern borders, the European Union must rearm, and you would like us to do our defence shopping in the USA. You want ‘more products made in our country, with American workers, American goods and American know-how’, you say.

Of the vast mountain of debt that European heads of government are now piling up – Ursula von der Leyen is dreaming of €800 billion, Friedrich Merz has gone a step further and managed to persuade the Bundestag to loosen the constitutional debt brake – you want to funnel as much as possible to the USA. But we are not going to make it that easy for you.

Take, for example, the American fifth-generation fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-35. One of your prestige projects. Over the past 20 years, the Pentagon has invested roughly twelve billion dollars a year in its development and production, and costs have already exceeded the original budget by 80 per cent. To make sure you are not left sitting on those billions, the aircraft needs to become an international bestseller. Germany has ordered 35 of these jets, Canada 88, and even perpetually neutral Switzerland signed for 36 planes, which cost around $100 million each.

We will have to consider cancelling these orders, not least because we have more than enough alternatives. The French Rafale (meaning ‘gust of wind’), built by Dassault, can compete very effectively with the F-35. In defence circles, there is considerable satisfaction with the jet’s demonstrated capability alongside American air forces in operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, Iraq and Syria.

In Brussels, the idea is already circulating that defence companies from the USA, the United Kingdom and Turkey should not receive contracts from the new debt-financed fund, which is set to hold €150 billion, if their home countries have not signed defence and security agreements with the EU.

That would also exclude all advanced weapons systems where a third country holds the ‘design authority’, meaning restrictions on the construction or use of certain components, or controls their ultimate deployment. One example: the US Patriot air and missile defence platform.

Europe can ‘no longer rely on the security architecture we have depended on until now’, said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a speech at the Danish Military Academy in Copenhagen on Monday. What she means: Buy European.

Obesity Made in America

The urge to protect yourself from your neighbours is a feeling you know well. The roughly 100,000 annual drug deaths in your country, you blame on Mexico, Canada and China. Their governments, you claim, stand by and watch as fentanyl flows into the USA ‘at a level nobody has ever seen before’ and has ‘killed many very young, beautiful people and destroyed families’. Hard-hitting tariffs are now supposed to push Canada and Mexico into fighting harder against drug trafficking.

You, Mr President, want to protect your population from drugs. We understand. We, too, want a healthy, long-lived and happy population here in Europe. But many large US corporations are standing in our way. Are you aware that you yourselves are the world’s leading exporters of the greatest dangers to human health?

Via international fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken, America spreads a food culture that is demonstrably harming us all. Three-quarters of adults in the US are overweight or obese, according to OECD data. Nearly ten per cent of deaths there are attributable to the consequences of excess weight. Over here, too, 52 per cent of adults are now overweight or obese, and 7.8 per cent of deaths are attributable to the consequences.

We must protect our population from these American hazards to European health. Perhaps, in future, the advertising billboards for Coca-Cola and McDonald’s should carry a clearly legible message. One that sounds like a polemic but is nothing other than the truth:

Fortunately, the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk has developed an effective remedy for the US disease (obesity) that can help millions of Americans and which your friend Elon Musk also uses. The weight-loss injection Ozempic.

Your own countryman Rufus Gifford, the former US ambassador to Copenhagen, has already floated the idea of considering a halt in deliveries of these injections. ‘That should shut Mar-a-Lago up pretty quickly’, he said jokingly.

We, as the European Union and especially Denmark, which you have antagonised with your move to claim Greenland, must now seriously consider this option, because we cannot continue to stand by and watch the spread of the US disease.

The Dollar Can Wobble

Beyond that, we have set our sights on another holy relic of your nation: the dollar. Today, the dollar is involved in 88 per cent of all foreign exchange transactions. 54 per cent of world trade is settled in dollars. And 58 per cent of all foreign exchange reserves held by central banks are denominated in dollars.

‘In God We Trust’ you write across the middle of your bills. But what would happen if trust in the dollar eroded? If investors turned away? And if the world’s reserve currency were suddenly called the euro?

Given the confused signals you are sending to your economy, we must consider the targeted reduction of dollar reserves within the EU. That could lead to falling demand for the dollar, weakening the currency’s value. A falling dollar would raise US import costs, which in turn would push up the prices American citizens pay for food, household goods and industrial products. The spectre of inflation, the one you promised your citizens you would banish, we would send right back to your doorstep.

At the same time, the sale of US Treasury bonds by Europe and our allies could undermine confidence in the stability of America’s financial markets. As you know, the United States depends heavily on demand for its government bonds to finance its budget deficits. A quarter of America’s debt, roughly eight trillion dollars, is held abroad. With $1.4 trillion, the eurozone is the largest creditor.

Your economic might, Mr President, you should picture as an inflated balloon. And we are holding a needle in our hand.

Farewell to Trademark Rights

An attack on American intellectual property would be no less devastating for the US economy. We will have to think about lifting the protection of trademark rights for US companies like Apple, Google, Netflix, Tesla and Pfizer in Europe. That way, we could make US products even better than they already are, as they’d become more European and independent of you. Independence could become our shared objective.

You think that’s impossible? Around the turn of the millennium, the European Union regulated import quotas for bananas originating in Latin America, imposing higher tariffs than on those from domestic producers. Ecuador was not willing to accept this unfairness, and the government in Quito filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Because the Ecuadorian banana producers were, in the court’s view, disadvantaged, the state was granted permission to impose so-called ‘cross-sector’ sanctions to the value of the damage suffered.

Ecuador targeted the intellectual property rights of European companies in several sensitive areas, including copyright and related rights (the music industry), geographical indications (alcoholic beverages) and industrial designs.

The strategy worked. Before the sanctions even took effect, Ecuador and the EU negotiated an agreement, and the dispute was settled. WTO law is equipped with such weapons – and we must consider deploying them against the USA.

Big Tech Plays by Our Rules

Which brings us to your most influential export: Big Tech. At your inauguration, Mr President, you surrounded yourself with famous friends. To impress you, the tech bosses from Silicon Valley squeezed into fancy suits and lined up obediently side by side. They all came to pay homage. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sundar Pichai of Google, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. And Elon Musk, who already wears three hats as corporate chief (Tesla and SpaceX), media mogul (X) and now ‘Special Government Employee‘, goes without saying.

Impressive. Or have you placed yourself in a relationship of dependency? There is no such thing as a free lunch.

You promised the CEOs fewer rules and fatter profits. They are all ‘smart people who create lots of jobs’, you praise. And in the numerous lawsuits against the monopoly positions of Google, Apple, Amazon and co., the corporate chiefs are banking on your support.

If only it were not for the European regulators. Over here, there are laws against hate speech and disinformation on the internet – rightly so, we believe. The third-party fact-checking that Mark Zuckerberg scrapped in the USA after the election will remain in place in Europe. And we have absolutely no use for monopolies. They are, in fact, illegal here because we love the market economy.

The list of suspected violations is long: Meta stands accused of deliberately promoting political disinformation and failing to adequately protect minors on its platforms. At Amazon, employees criticise a surveillance-driven ‘climate of fear’. And Google, Brussels warns, gains an unfair competitive advantage by promoting primarily its own products in its search engine.

It may seem to you as though our EU Commission is asleep. In fact, its experts are examining, investigating and pursuing your tech giants. At the end of March 2024, competition proceedings were launched against Google, Apple and Meta to determine whether these companies have violated the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, or both at once.

The proceedings are currently being deliberately reined in, we hear from Brussels. At least one eye remains shut. You, dear Mr Trump, are forcing us to open both eyes wide and to contemplate the full force of our legislation.

Former German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel said the Europeans are now seen as nothing more than ‘the vegetarians in a world of meat-eaters’. But it is thanks to you that we are finally developing the appetite to throw the steaks back on the grill.

Across this continent, a dream is blossoming: the dream of returning to a strong Europe, a strong European Union. Partnership cannot mean subordination. That independence can work, too, has been shown by our decoupling from Russia and our de-risking from China.

And yet we want to stress that, as you, the businessman, surely know, the measures we must now consider are not without alternative. A successful partnership proves itself through a balancing of interests and a willingness to tackle shared tasks in close alignment. And it requires mutual respect.

That is the task ahead. We hope, Mr President, that you will meet us in this spirit. We have the example of the great achievements of recent decades before our eyes, and the possibility of surpassing them.

And a New York skyline without the Statue of Liberty – that would be a real shame, wouldn’t it?

With optimistic regards,

Europe