What Trump's Foreign Policy Plans Mean For Europe.
The US government has made harsh accusations against Europe in its new strategy paper. How does Europe react? Brussels between outrage, helplessness and hope.
Donald Trump is announcing more and more plans for his new presidency that show that the USA will continue to pursue an aggressive foreign policy under Trump. Trump could become a catastrophe, especially for Europe.
Donald Trump differs from other Western politicians in that he actually tries to implement his campaign promises. And his most important campaign promise was “Make America Great Again”. He is not as different from the US Democrats as one would think, he just has a slightly different approach, which is primarily financially based, because Trump comes from a business background, while the US Democrats operate geopolitically .
Let's take a look at what goals Trump has formulated and what they mean for the EU countries.
Europe.
Europe is likely to face even darker times under Trump than under Biden. The EU states are vassals of the USA. This has been true since the Second World War in Western Europe, where the transatlantic structures were established after the war, without which no one can have a career in the media and politics. In this way, the USA has secured power over Western Europe and is ensuring that, if possible, only governments loyal to the USA come to power there.
Eastern Europe had the chance to become sovereign after the Second World War, but the USA extended the structures that were so successful in Western Europe to Eastern Europe and took over power there too, which it consolidated with the expansion of the EU and NATO. The current example of Romania shows how tightly the USA has these countries, where no politician explicitly loyal to the USA made it to the runoff vote in the presidential election, which is why the election was summarily canceled after the USA had quite openly demanded this.
In his last term in office, Trump openly said what the Democrats and their think tanks only said in secret: the European states should pay the USA more money for “protection”, so one can certainly speak of “protection money”. These “protection money payments” run primarily through two channels: on the one hand, the reimbursement of the occupation costs by US troops, which are officially referred to as the costs of stationing NATO troops, and on the other hand, the defense budgets of the European states, because the Most of the weapons they buy are purchased in the USA.
Increase in payments for troop deployment and defense.
The German government claims it does not know how much Germany pays the United States for the presence of US troops, but it is billions per year. By the way, the fact that the federal government cannot give any figures is a lie, because the German embassy in the USA previously published figures on this; you can find the details on the topic here.
Trump already demanded in 2019 that Germany should “pay the full cost of the American soldiers stationed in your country, plus a 50 percent surcharge for the honor of hosting them.” And it is currently being reported everywhere that Trump is threatening to only grant US “protection” to NATO countries that increase their defense spending to three percent of GDP. There is even talk of five percent.
Of course, these funds will also flow to the US defense industry. In the case of Germany, three percent of GDP would mean that Germany would have to increase its defense spending to around 120 billion euros, five percent would mean an increase to 200 billion. Just a reminder: Just a few years ago, Germany's defense spending was around 40 billion.
And something else to think about: The German federal budget was 445 billion euros in 2024. If 120 or even 200 billion euros of this are to flow into defense in the future instead of 80 billion euros today, then massive cuts will inevitably have to be made in other areas and the Western ones traditionally make savings States always come first when it comes to social spending.
In addition, the NATO treaty contains no legal obligation to help a NATO state in the event of an attack, as I have shown here. And Trump isn't talking about the US making any commitment in return for the huge amounts of money he's demanding.
Business.
The European economy was already significantly weakened under Biden when the EU, under pressure from the US government and with the good help of EU Commission President von der Leyen, gave up cheap Russian energy sources, which are the basis for European industry and thus prosperity for Europe, while at the same time the Biden administration passed its “anti-inflation law”, which promises European companies a total of around 370 billion in subsidies if they bring their production from Europe to the USA.
That could also have come from Trump, who wants to continue on this path. On his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that the EU should import more oil and gas from the USA, otherwise he would introduce tariffs on European goods. The EU should compensate for the “enormous trade deficit,” Trump wrote, adding: “Otherwise there will be endless tariffs!!!,” with the word tariffs written in capital letters.
The US trade deficit with the EU was $131.3 billion in 2022. Trump does not see the blame for this in the weaknesses of the US economy, but rather calls on the EU to reduce the deficit to its own detriment. However, this is not something unique to Trump; previous US administrations have also done this, which has repeatedly been the reason for smaller and larger trade wars between the USA and the EU.
The EU is trying to avoid a trade war with Trump and tariffs by increasing purchases of oil, gas and agricultural products from the US, which may be one of the reasons why von der Leyen recently claimed in all seriousness that US Gas would be cheaper than Russian gas and has demanded that Europe should buy American liquid gas and no longer buy Russian gas.
This is a doubly effective way to reduce the US trade deficit at the expense of the EU, because firstly, US gas sales increase US exports to Europe and secondly, expensive US gas deteriorates the competitiveness of the European economy, which increases European exports to the EU USA reduced.
The problem is not whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power in the USA, the problem is the USA itself and its claim to dominate the world. They don't care what happens to the rest of the world and Europe is currently feeling this very clearly. This will not change under President Trump.
All those who see Trump as something of a savior should think about this.
#ZOG #Empire #CollectiveWest #Hegemony #Deception #EU #NATO #US #WorldWarIII
Lost Qatari volumes cannot easily be replaced, with limited spare capacity globally, rising geopolitical risks, and constrained LNG shipping amplifying shortages.
