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Current EU-US relations: into the abyss?
Most would admit that transatlantic relations have experienced their share of ups and downs ever since World War II. Depending on the incumbents in Washington or different European capitals, relations tended to be more tense or more relaxed. However, transatlantic relations appear to have reached a new historic low at the moment. US President Donald Trump seems to have set about in his second mandate to cut the proverbial umbilical cord that has united Europe and the US in the past. In the first 60-days of his second mandate, he has made a number of overtures towards the European Union, and European security more broadly, that have caused many feathers to be ruffled in European capitals.
On his first day in office, Trump declared that the United States needs to control Greenland to ensure international security and that he did not rule out taking the island by force. This is a proposal that he brought up for the first time during his first mandate, but did not act on. This time, however, he is insisting much more on Greenland becoming US territory. The reaction in both Greenland and EU member state Denmark has been dismissive of this proposal. In the March 2025 election on Greenland, the island’s inhabitants gave an overwhelming victory to the Democrat party which favors long-term independence from Denmark as well as no interest in ceding future potential sovereignty to the US. For the Greenlanders, there is no need to expand the existing relations with the US, as the latter has a substantial military facility, the Pituffik Space Base, on the northwest coast of Greenland and there has been military collaboration in some form since the early 1950s. The US is also welcome to seek commercial mining deals with Greenland at par with other countries interested in investing in Greenland’s critical raw materials.
Weeks into Trump’s second mandate, US Vice President JD Vance held a speech at the Munich Security Conference, berating European leaders for not being democratic enough, as they ignore the will of their people, overturn elections, ignore religious freedoms and do not act to halt illegal migration. The Vice President’s remarks over overturned elections are related to the Romanian Constitutional Court’s finding that the first round of Presidential elections in Romania were unconstitutional. Vance also astonished the European audience with accusing European governments and what he called European Union “commissars” of being more interested in stifling free speech than in providing security for their citizens. Moreover, he added: “[i]n Washington there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square agree or disagree.” Vance’s speech came at the same time that another Trump ally, Elon Musk, pronounced his strong admiration of Germany’s far-right wing party AfD in the run-up to the German federal elections in 2025.
Last, but not least, as announced already during the campaign trail in 2024, in March 2025 Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on EU steel and aluminium products in retaliation for the alleged EU trade surplus. The US President has held that “[t]he European Union was formed in order to screw the United States […] That’s the purpose of it. [And, t]hey have done a good job of it”. Trump feels the European Union has "really taken advantage of us". The Trumpian account of the EU-US trade balance may, however, exaggerate the actual numbers. While there is a trade surplus on goods, favorable to the EU, in the area of services the trade balance is favorable to the US. Foreign direct investment could also be factored in. EU and US firms have €5.3 trillion worth of investment in each other’s markets (2022 data). In 2022, US exports of goods and services to the EU support 2.3 million jobs in the US, and EU firms’ investments in the US employ 3.4 million people. With higher US tariffs on steel and aluminium, or the use of across-the-board tariff at some future point, could thus potentially undermine job creation and employment in the US across a number of important economic sectors.
The second Trump’s administration’s overtures toward the European Union and its member states have been met with mixed emotions in the EU. The attempts against an EU member state’s territorial integrity (Greenland) and threats of use of force to achieve the objective, meddling in EU elections as well as siding strongly with the far-right political forces, which mainstream EU political parties and a broad EU public perceive as undermining democracy for their fascist or Nazi ideology, as well as wanting to turn the premises on which world trade for better or worse has been based on in the last few decades, have turned many heads in Europe.
Populists and/or far-right parties have to some extent welcomed the US’ attention, although on more than one occasion they have had to distance themselves from some of the MAGA-movements more extreme gestures (“Make American Great Again”, MAGA). Moreover, these parties have been founded on an anti-US rhetoric and the opposition to US foreign and security policy around the world. Hence, some of them have ramp up their pro-Russian rhetoric to balance their ideological alignment with MAGA in order not to lose their loyal voter base. Even the EU-US trade war is a concern, because of its potential effects on the national economy on far right supporters among French farmers or German workers in the car industry.
For mainstream EU politicians it has been an uphill battle to respond to Trump, as the latter do not seem to pay any attention to traditional diplomacy and/or their habitual channels of conversation. For example, Denmark’s prime minister Mette Fredriksen and Greenland’s prime minister Múte Bourup Egede do not appear to be able to convey their joint rejection of any proposals for the US to take over Greenland. Similarly, the EU had sent envoys to Washington to try to avoid a trade war, by offering to buy more American liquefied natural gas and lowering the EU’s own tariffs on cars to match those of the US. The US President does not, however, seem to listen and/or want to engage in diplomatic contacts with the EU. The President of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, has allegedly tried to schedule a meeting with the US President to discuss trade among other things, but the latter has yet to respond to such overtures.
In failing to reach the US by other means, the EU decided to respond in kind on the US 25 precent levies on EU steel and aluminium products. Effective from 1st of April 2025 the Commission reinstates tariffs on more than four billion euros worth of US exports (steel and aluminium, bourbon, motorcycles, jeans, and orange juice). The European Commission also announced a second package worth over eighteen billion euros (on US cosmetics, clothes, wood, soybeans, and other agricultural goods) as of 13th of April.
In the EU, the primary question on everyone’s mind is if the US hostility and tension will continue unabated for the remainder of Trump’s stay in the White House. The secondary question is if transatlantic relations can ever return to a status quo ante even beyond Trump’s presidency. There are those in the EU that are already preparing for that the answer to both questions is ‘no’. Many EU leaders have of late begun to recognize that the fairly Europhile Biden administration was perhaps an exception to the rule in a long range of US presidents who have wished to disengage from Europe since the end of the Cold Wat. The EU and its member states thus has to plan and prepare for a future where they can no longer relay on the US to achieve their preferred global objectives. They will need to find other partners around the world with whom they shared similar outlook on international relations and domestic liberal values.
Acknowledgement: This blog was funded by the European Union through the Jean Monnet Chair in Global Actor EU: The International Relations of the European Union in a Competitive and Fractured World (GLOBALEUTY), project number 101175018.
Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, the European Education and Culture Executive Agency or the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals. Neither the EU nor IBEI can be held responsible for them.