The Relationship Between Europe and the United States Will Enter a Difficult Period of Reshaping

Due to the Cold War, Europe and the United States formed a military alliance through NATO. However, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the cohesion between the two sides has declined. Subsequently, a series of major strategic changes occurred on both sides of the Atlantic, including the birth of the Euro and the eastward expansion of the European Union at the turn of the century, France and Germany's public opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, and the US's "pivot to Asia" after President Obama took office, all of which have contributed to the further loosening of the transatlantic alliance. In 2017, after Trump took office, he exacerbated the tensions between the US and Europe, and the transatlantic relationship hit its lowest point since the end of World War II. In 2021, after Biden took office, he made great efforts to repair the relationship between the US and Europe. At the same time, due to the sudden escalation of the Ukraine crisis, NATO was reactivated, and the relationship between the US and Europe improved significantly. However, as the 2024 US presidential election approaches, especially with the possibility of Trump's return, the transatlantic relationship will face new turbulence and a difficult reshaping.

Ⅰ. The Biden administration strengthened the alliance and cooperation between Europe and the United States

Biden's defeat of Trump for the presidency in 2021 comes at a time when the EU-US alliance is in jeopardy. Trump's four years in office (2017-2020) have seriously damaged the EU-US alliance. First, Trump refused to clearly express the US security commitment to Europe on the grounds that the military spending of most European NATO members did not meet the NATO requirement of 2% of their national economic aggregate, shaking the foundation of the EU-US alliance. At the same time, political and strategic communication between Europe and the United States has become less and less during the Trump administration, leading French President Emmanuel Macron to declare that "NATO is suffering brain death." Second, Trump pursues unilateralism and has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement on climate Change, UNESCO, the World Health Organization and other multilateral institutions and agreements, which runs counter to the concept of multilateralism adhered to by European countries. Third, after Trump came to power, he implemented the "America first" policy and imposed high tariffs on steel and aluminum products imported from countries including EU member states, which intensified the economic friction between Europe and the United States. Fourthly, Trump likes to deal with individual European countries, and has made no secret of his hatred for the EU for four years in office, and has repeatedly encouraged France and other countries to follow the footsteps of the United Kingdom to "leave the European Union". Faced with growing tensions between Europe and the United States, in 2017, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel exclaimed that Europe's days of dependence on others were coming to an end, and Europeans needed to take their destiny into their own hands.

Unlike Trump, the Biden administration believes that Allies are essential for the United States to achieve its global strategy, and therefore attaches great importance to maintaining and strengthening cooperation with Allies. In 2021, Biden stressed that "America is back" as soon as he took office, and won back the trust of European countries by returning to the international multilateral institutions and organizations that Trump withdrew from, reaffirming his support for the so-called "rules-based international system." At the same time, in the field of economy and trade, Biden eased the trade dispute between Europe and the United States through two major "truce" decisions. First, on June 15, 2021, at the first US-EU summit that Biden took office, he announced a "truce" agreement on the dispute over aviation subsidies between Boeing and Airbus, which had been delayed for 17 years, and stopped imposing high tariffs on each other for five years. Second, in October 2021, Europe and the United States announced a "truce" agreement on the steel and aluminum trade war launched by Trump, and the two sides suspended mutual taxes. On September 29, 2021, the first meeting of the Transatlantic Trade and Technology Council (TTC) was held in Pittsburgh, marking the beginning of institutionalized coordination and cooperation between Europe and the United States in dealing with China. To date, the EU-US Trade and Technology Council has held five ministerial meetings.

The outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022 further brought transatlantic relations closer. On the one hand, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has highlighted Europe's dependence on the United States for security, and European countries need to strengthen NATO to deter Russia. If the recovery of EU-US relations in the early days of Biden's presidency was mainly the result of the US abandoning Trump's diplomacy and adjusting its European policy, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict promoted the rapid approach of Europe to the United States. On the other hand, European demands have been met with a positive response from the United States. After the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Biden administration quickly convened a special NATO summit, joined hands with Europe to impose severe sanctions on Russia, and jointly supported and assisted Ukraine, resulting in a constantly strengthening relationship between Europe and the United States. At the same time, Western platforms such as NATO, EU-US summits, and especially the G7, whose influence declined after the Cold War, are reinvigorated. In short, although since Biden came to power, the United States in Afghanistan withdrawal, the creation of the United States, Britain and Australia "Trilateral security partnership" (AUKUS), the adoption of the Inflation reduction Act and other aspects have caused dissatisfaction in European countries, but generally speaking, during Biden's administration, the relationship between Europe and the United States has not only gone out of the trough, but also strengthened cooperation in various fields.

Ⅱ. Trump's election will once again hit EU-US relations

In terms of transatlantic relations, the United States is the main variable, and the change of political parties and presidential candidates in the United States have a major impact on the relations between Europe and the United States, which people can see very clearly from the two US administrations in the past eight years. With the possibility of Donald Trump's return to the White House increasing, the 2024 U.S. presidential election is attracting great attention in Europe, and Europe as a whole can be said to suffer from "Trumpphobia" or "U.S. election anxiety."

To be sure, if the Democratic Party wins the election, there will be no fundamental change in EU-US relations, transatlantic cooperation will be maintained, and continuity and predictability will be the key words of transatlantic relations in the coming years. However, if Trump wins and returns to the White House, EU-US relations are bound to suffer a major blow, and the future of the transatlantic alliance will face great uncertainty. The impact of Trump's reelection as US President on EU-US relations will be mainly reflected in the following three aspects.

First of all, the political, academic and media circles of European countries are widely worried that Trump will stick to the "America first" principle and pursue the "three principles" of populism, protectionism and isolationism even more than he did in the previous administration. The reason is that Mr Trump and his campaign team, having learnt the lessons of the last administration, are vigorously preparing to install people loyal to his philosophy in key positions in the new administration, in order to avoid the influence of "traditional moderates" in the Republican Party. As Moreno-Bertoldi points out, currently, unlike in 2016, Trump and his team are better prepared and much less constrained by what used to be "mainstream Republicans" at the time (i.e., pro-globalization and, to some extent, a "rules-based international order"). In addition, it is widely believed that the American think tanks that strongly support Trump, including the Heritage Foundation, are working hard to formulate detailed action plans for his return to power. It can be expected that once Trump comes to power again, the battle of ideas between Europe and the United States will become more intense.

Second, because Trump has been dissatisfied with European Allies' unwillingness to increase defense spending, the US security commitment to Europe is in danger of being hollow, and the EU-US alliance is likely to be hollowed out. The reason why many European countries regard Trump's comeback as a "nightmare" is mainly because of the fear that he will abandon the security protection of the United States and NATO to Europe. What is more worrying for Europe is that, unlike the last time Trump took office, Russia has changed from a "potential threat" to a "real threat" for European countries due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, and Trump's attitude toward NATO is more negative than the first time he took office. On February 10, 2024, at a campaign rally in South Carolina, he said he would "encourage" Russia to "do whatever it wants" to NATO Allies that do not meet their military spending obligations. At the same time, European media have disclosed that in 2020, Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: "You need to understand that if Europe is attacked, we will never come to your aid and support you." All this adds to Europe's worries. The US Senate passed an amendment in 2023 that aims to prevent the US from withdrawing from NATO (requiring the president to obtain the consent of two-thirds of the Senate or the unanimous approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives before withdrawing from NATO), so it is widely believed in European countries that Trump may not be able to pull the US out of NATO in his new term. But he could have kept the United States on hold in the event of an attack on its European Allies.

Another issue closely related to European security, and of great concern to most European countries, is that a Trump presidency would pressure Ukraine to give up some of its territory in exchange for Russia agreeing to a ceasefire.

During the 2024 election campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would end the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 24 hours of becoming president. And most of Europe's positions on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine are very different from Trump's. In order to deal with the so-called "new imperialism" of Russia, the EU and most European countries insist that the position of "anti-Russian" and "aid Ukraine" will not change.

Third, economic and trade frictions between Europe and the United States are likely to intensify. On the one hand, there is a growing sense in Europe that economic competition between Europe and the United States will lead to an "America first" policy for whoever is president of the United States. In fact, with neither side willing to make concessions, the aforementioned tariff truce between Europe and the United States that the Biden administration has promoted has merely shelved the issue, rather than finally resolving the conflict. On the other hand, once Trump returns to office, trade frictions and disputes between Europe and the United States are bound to increase. European countries generally believe that with Trump's second term in office, the United States will not only raise tariffs on imports from the European Union, but also continue to put pressure on European countries in the name of security, asking the latter to follow the United States to restrict or block economic and technological exchanges with China. In this case, the economic and trade conflict between Europe and the United States will undoubtedly expand further. The German Institute for Business Research (IW) predicted that a Trump victory would cost Germany up to 150 billion euros, based on the sweeping tariffs promised by Trump and the expected slowdown in overall economic growth due to the escalation of economic and trade frictions between China and the United States.

Ⅲ. The relationship between Europe and the United States will enter a difficult period of reshaping

With the shooting of Trump on July 13, 2024, the international community's attention to the US election has further increased. As for the relationship between Europe and the US, whatever the outcome of the US election, the transatlantic relationship will enter a difficult period of reshaping.

First, with the political evolution of the United States and Europe, European security will gradually form a new stage of development in which Europe will assume greater responsibilities under the framework of NATO. After the end of World War II, especially since the establishment of NATO in 1949, the relations between Europe and the United States have experienced two periods: Cold War and post-Cold War. Total dependence on the United States and NATO is the fundamental symbol of EU-US relations in the Cold War period (EU-US relations version 1.0), and the prominent feature of the post-Cold War period (EU-US relations version 2.0) is that Europe's security dependence on the United States is weakened, and the importance of NATO is downgraded. The new era, version 3.0, will be marked by the US no longer fully fulfilling its obligation to protect Europe, and Europe will be forced to strengthen its own defenses. The new era of relations between Europe and the United States will not only be a long process of development, but will also be filled with turbulence caused by European discontent and American reluctance. In this process, the US clearly remains the key variable, with Europe in a painful state of flux. Even if the Democrats win power, a growing number of European strategists will have to admit that the US will "increasingly turn inward, and its outward turn increasingly towards East Asia". Mr Macron's push for strategic autonomy will find greater support in Europe. If Mr Trump wins, Europe's response will be fundamental. Although some European countries are likely to reach bilateral security agreements with the United States, most countries, especially major European countries such as France and Germany, will have to accept the challenge of reality and strive to unite European countries to share the responsibility of protecting Europe. Every leap forward in European unity since the war has been the result of the crisis, and now Europe has reached such a critical moment. It should be emphasized that European NATO members will not voluntarily abandon NATO, in fact, these countries will continue to find ways to "keep the Americans", which is the original purpose of NATO. As Max Bergman notes, while European leaders are likely to take a tougher and more confrontational approach to Trump than they did in his first term, they will preserve the transatlantic alliance as much as possible, recognizing that a potential weakening of the US commitment to NATO would create a deep crisis in Europe. But while trying to preserve NATO, countries such as France and Germany will promote the joint defense capabilities of European countries in the name of building a "stronger European pillar" within NATO. At present, the defense industry of European countries is not independent, and the United States military enterprises provide a large number of weapons and military equipment for Europe, and this situation will undoubtedly change in the future. In the long run, the future of European security may be further transformed from the "responsibility sharing" that the United States has been hoping to see in the past to "responsibility transfer", that is, the responsibility for protecting Europe is completely transferred from the United States to European countries.

Second, as Europe and the United States struggle to find a new model for European security cooperation, Europe will find that it will also need to adapt to increasing economic and trade conflicts. On the one hand, for Europe, its cooperation with the US is indispensable. The US has long been both the EU's largest trading partner, accounting for a fifth of EU exports to the US in 2023, and the EU's largest investment destination. More importantly, Europe is economically more dependent on the United States than the United States is on it, and the EU is more dependent on exports to the United States than the United States is on exports to it. In 2022, EU exports to the US will account for 2.8% of its GDP, while US exports to the EU will account for only 1.4% of US GDP. The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has increased the imbalance in the economic relationship between Europe and the United States: in 2023, the EU will import 46% of its total LNG imports from the United States. On the other hand, "America first" has moved beyond partisanship in the United States, and Europe will have to adjust to a future of increased trade conflict and competition. In particular, it is widely believed in Europe that whoever wins the US election in 2024 will take a tough stance towards China, including economic and technological restrictions on China's development, in which case the EU and its member states will be caught in the dilemma of choosing sides between China and the US.

Finally, the rise of populist and other radical forces in Europe will increase the complexity and uncertainty of reshaping the relationship between Europe and the United States. As mentioned earlier, the current change in EU-US relations has been driven by the forces of American populism represented by Trump. While divisions in the United States are growing, Europe is also experiencing the rise of populism, dominated by the far right. The results of the June 2024 European Parliament elections show that while the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties remain dominant, the rapid growth of far-right parties is undeniable. In many European countries, including France, Germany and Italy, far-right parties have become important political forces in their respective countries. At present, although these extremist parties have given up radical propositions such as "Brexit", they are still anti-establishment as their main political demands, including advocating the implementation of strict anti-immigration policies at home, demanding "national first" in diplomacy, and taking different positions from mainstream political parties in European countries on relations with Russia and the United States. If Trump wins, the far-right populist forces in Europe will undoubtedly be greatly encouraged, and their growing momentum will further increase the complexity and uncertainty of the future development of EU-US relations. (Author: Feng Zhongping, Director and Fellow of Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)