The EU is struggling to find some wiggle room between an increasingly hostile United States and an increasingly assertive China. A flurry of bilateral meetings and summits in Europe is a clear sign of feverish diplomacy, if not panic, mostly as a response to the whirlwind of developments triggered by Donald Trump’s second administration.
The Trump Shock to Europe
Most Europeans did not want to see Trump back in the White House – after all, during his first stint as U.S. president Trump called the EU “one of the biggest foes” of the United States. Once the election results became clear last November, Europeans knew they should brace for rough times, though they did not quite expect the extent of what was to come.
Trump recently stated that the EU’s mission was “to screw the U.S.,” while Vice President J.D. Vance stunned his audience in Munich with a lecture on what he perceived as Europe’s flawed democracy. Add to that Elon Musk’s undisguised support for right-wing populist parties in Europe, which are enjoying a MAGA tailwind.
The hostile language from the U.S. president and his close entourage is shocking to traditionally soft-spoken Europeans. But, apart from its incendiary statements, the Trump 2.0 administration has thrown a wrecking ball at transatlantic relations. In what is seen by many as the biggest reversal in U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II, the U.S. president has signaled to Europeans that they can no longer count on Washington to have their back. The United States and Europe have different threat perceptions: while the EU sees Russia as an existential threat, the utmost threat for the U.S. is China. This is why the U.S. position on transatlantic relations has moved from “burden sharing” to “burden shifting.”
Next, Trump launched direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, clearly sidelining Ukraine and the rest of Europe. At the same time, he sought to impose harsh terms on Kyiv without offering tangible security guarantees, which led to a shouting match in the White House between Trump and Vance and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Europe watched in shock, then scrambled to convey its own strong support for Zelenskyy.
The European Response
In Europe, messages coming from Washington, D.C. are setting in. The EU still needs to get over the initial shock – a painful process that is now underway. The clock is ticking down fast and, despite their notoriously slow decision making procedures, Europeans are regrouping and getting ready for a fight, if need be.
At first, European leaders were trying to cajole Trump, while standing their ground on key issues. Europe has largely accepted the fact that it cannot rely on American boots for ever. Most EU member states agree that they should spend more on defense, including the purchase of U.S.-made weapons. At the same time, a number of European leaders openly disagree with Trump’s decision to negotiate with Putin over the heads of the EU.
Despite being a passionate Atlanticist, the incoming German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has stated that his priority will be a new European security structure. He will find a staunch supporter of this idea in France’s Emmanuel Macron, who has long been advocating for strategic autonomy in critical domains, such as defense and technology. Macron has also been the first European leader to float the idea of sending European peacekeepers to Ukraine, and the United Kingdom’s Keir Starmer is on the same page.
Boosting Europe’s military capabilities is easier said than done. Not only because of fiscal constraints in European economies, but also because of the usual diversity of policy views and internal divisions in the EU, which will struggle to replace U.S. security guarantees. In short, Europe cannot sever its relationship with the United States altogether, though it will definitely have to substantially revisit it and recalibrate it.
To make matters even worse, a transatlantic trade war also seems inevitable, with Trump set on imposing tariffs to slash the $267 billion trade deficit of the U.S. with the EU in 2024. In turn, Brussels has vowed to respond firmly and swiftly to additional trade barriers to the U.S. market.
A China-EU Rapprochement?
Beijing smelled a unique opportunity in the transatlantic rift and wasted no time in trying to make the most of it. For starters, this extraordinary development adds credibility to Beijing’s narrative that the East is rising, while the West is in inevitable decline.
On the war in Ukraine, Beijing hopes that Europeans will get over their resentment for China’s disingenuous “neutrality” over the past three years. Indeed, the audience at the Munich Security Conference was happy to hear China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi say that Europe should play a role in the peace negotiations, which contrasted sharply with the Trump administration’s actions.
Trump’s “America First” policy is highly likely to nudge Europeans in the direction of ending European dependence on the United States. Decision-makers in Beijing expect that Trump’s brutal pressure will bring Europe closer to China and, on the face of it, this would make sense. In order to maintain its strategic autonomy, Europe needs China to counterbalance Trump’s United States. Europeans may also see opportunities to cooperate with Beijing on global climate action now that the U.S. has walked out – again – from the Paris Climate Agreement. China will definitely strive to capitalize on the void left by the United States’ withdrawal from international institutions, and multilateralism is in the DNA of the EU as a union of nation states.
At the same time, the likelihood of a full-fledged détente between the EU and China is low, regardless of how transatlantic relations develop. In 2023, the EU’s trade deficit with China stood at a yawning 291 billion euros and growing dependence on Chinese green tech is a cause for concern. Spats between Brussels and Beijing over China’s industrial overcapacity, state subsidies, and market access for European firms will continue unabated.
Therefore, the European Commission will keep pushing its tough-on-China agenda to level the playing field, even if certain member states will probably try to dilute the EU’s economic security agenda. In parallel, Europe is eyeing new markets, through a recent political agreement on an EU-Mercosur partnership and a prospective free trade agreement with India.
Europe on the Back Foot
Obviously, the EU “doesn’t have the cards,” as Trump would say – there’s no hiding it. For the time being, it doesn’t have its own army and depends on the security umbrella of the U.S.-led NATO. It is also true that the very architecture of the EU renders decision making a time-consuming process, often involving a series of strenuous all-night-long negotiations. The EU is neither a unitary state, as China is, nor a federation like the United States.
For all that, equidistance between the U.S. and China is not in the cards. While the EU will have to devise a hedging strategy and some cooperation with Beijing is part of that, Europeans will always be closer to Americans in cultural terms – even if not to the Trump 2.0 administration at this stage.
Reducing U.S. commitment to Europe’s security may be consistent with the “America First” narrative, but in the long run alienating European partners and playing footsie with Putin’s Russia is counterintuitive. If Trump hopes to break the Sino-Russian tandem, he may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Trump may think that he can emulate Richard Nixon’s 1971 historic overture to China, this time around by luring Moscow away from Beijing’s embrace. But China will never allow that to happen, as it needs the Russian “gas station with nukes” in its crusade against U.S. hegemony, as amply illustrated in the joint declaration Xi and Putin signed on February 4, 2022 in Beijing and reiterated in their latest phone call on February 24, 2025.
In his first term as president, Trump opted for a spectacular reversal of frosty relations with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and even stepped over the border line at Panmunjom. But in the end, Trump ended his term with nothing to show for the brief warming with Kim, and U.S. policy snapped back to the norm.
A fractured West will be the best possible gift to China, the main strategic competitor of the United States, on its way to global dominance. Conversely, the collective strength of a compact community of allies and like-minded partners, including Europeans, is a precious asset Washington cannot afford to squander.