A few days after America elected Donald Trump as president, Emmanuel Macron issued a warning. The geopolitical world, he said, is made up of carnivores and herbivores, and if Europeans remain herbivores, they are doomed to a miserable fate. Recent weeks have shown that in a world of geopolitical predators, the EU remains increasingly vulnerable to becoming prey.
Before Trump fired the first salvo in the trade war, it seemed that Brussels had a plan of action for every eventuality. Ursula von der Leyen and her team claimed that all options were on the table and that they would not hesitate to use them if necessary. Pro-EU think tanks were developing grand ideas, such as forming a united trade front with Indo-Pacific countries and the Global South, alongside a revival of the WTO.
In reality, however, Brussels does not believe it can play hardball with Washington. Shortly after Trump was sworn in, a delegation led by Trade Commissioner Šefčovič quietly traveled to Washington and proposed a “deal” that effectively amounted to a renunciation of “strategic autonomy”. Brussels offered to purchase even more American LNG and weapons. The 47th U.S. president rejected the proposal.
Still in play is the use of the Anti-Coercion Instrument, originally designed with the return of Trump and his neomercantilism in mind. It offers a wide range of countermeasures against countries that impose trade restrictions on EU member states. Yet this week, following a summit of EU trade ministers, journalists heard that there was no consensus on activating the tool.
The contrast with the reactions from Canada and China is striking. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared the old relationship with the U.S. over — and retaliated. China, too, announced that it would not yield and was prepared to “fight to the end”. Neither country hesitated to respond, reaffirming their status as geopolitical carnivores. Brussels, by contrast, appeared to be hoping the problem would resolve itself, placing its faith in the market and Wall Street to steer Trump back toward trade sanity.
What prevents the EU from becoming a geopolitical carnivore are internal divisions over how to respond to Trump’s trade war declarations. Ireland’s Foreign Minister, Simon Harris, argued that member states do not want to fall into a tit-for-tat logic with the United States. He rejected the “nuclear option” of the Anti-Coercion Instrument, warning it would lead to damaging escalation at a moment when cooler heads should prevail. The Spanish trade minister also insisted that invoking the Anti-Coercion Instrument should be postponed at all costs, and that all alternative avenues should be explored first. A similarly strong voice against retaliation and in favour of further negotiations is coming from Italy, which has proposed freezing the first round of EU tariffs on steel and aluminium until the end of the month.
The EU is not a structure built for an era of trade wars, but for a liberal age marked by geopolitical quiet
The EU was created at the start of the great wave of globalisation, driven by free-trade-oriented post-war U.S. presidents. Its power has long been rooted not in armies or factories, but in its ability to regulate markets and set standards — what some have called its “regulatory empire”. The EU is not a structure built for an era of trade wars, but for a liberal age marked by geopolitical quiet. However, the force of national egoism remains insurmountable, as illustrated by the debate over recent tariffs package: at the insistence of France, Ireland, Italy, and Spain, Kentucky bourbon was removed from the list. If champagne and wine lobbies are enough to undermine European solidarity, then perhaps that solidarity was never worth much to begin with.
The EU finds itself caught between the Scylla of Trump’s tariffs and the Charybdis of Chinese overcapacity
To make matters worse, the EU finds itself caught between the Scylla of Trump’s tariffs and the Charybdis of Chinese overcapacity. Chinese goods that were previously destined for the U.S. will be redirected toward Europe. However, internal discord is likely to make a coherent response to the surge in Chinese exports difficult.
Many member states maintain close economic ties with Beijing. German foreign direct investment in China from major industrial companies — such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and BASF — has reached record levels since the pandemic. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is actively courting Chinese investment: battery manufacturing giant CATL is investing billions of euros in a factory in the north of the country, while EV maker Chery has opened a plant in Barcelona. Moreover, China is the largest importer of Spanish meat. When the EU proposed imposing tariffs on Chinese EVs last October, Spain strongly objected, alongside Germany and Hungary — where CATL is also building a factory, the largest foreign investment in the country’s history.
It seems that Trump may have a more lasting and profound impact on the EU than on the USA. His tough stance compelled Europe to take the concept of strategic autonomy seriously, and perhaps to confront the narrow calculations and wishful thinking behind it.
First, the country expected to lead the effort to build strategic autonomy is, on closer inspection, the sick man of Europe. France’s economic growth is anemic at just 0.4 per cent, productivity has declined by 6 per cent since 2019, unemployment is rising to 8 per cent, and efforts at reindustrialisation have been ailing. Combined with institutional paralysis and political chaos, it’s hard to believe Paris is capable of altering Europe’s trajectory. Berlin, still the “reluctant hegemon”, views the EU crisis more as an opportunity to revitalise its own industry than as a chance to transform the EU into a fully-fledged geopolitical actor. Moreover, Europeans lack a shared vision of the threats they face or the priorities they must address. Leaders in Italy and Spain have openly questioned the need to rearm Europe, reflecting the broader attitude in southern Europe. Surveys show that, for most citizens there, the top priority is fixing the economy.
However, even with European solidarity and the political will to rearm the continent, the fragmentation of the defense industrial base and the inadequacy of European technology make such efforts unfeasible in the short term. Take, for example, missiles capable of piercing enemy air defenses: Europe is not expected to develop indigenous technology in this area before 2033, at the earliest. Joint German-French projects to build European tanks and jet fighters remain decades away. Macron’s and von der Leyen’s talk about strategic autonomy amount to little more than fantasy. The reality was aptly described by German-born American technologist John Loeber as providerism — a condition marked by ignorance of political and economic realities because “everything is provided for you, and the underlying mechanics and costs are abstracted away.” Decades of buying goods from China and relying on American software and defense technology have allowed Europeans to avoid confronting the hard truth at the root of their current predicament: they have ceased to be producers.
The EU’s top dignitaries seem to know that strategic autonomy is little more than a spin. Their lack of seriousness was evident even before Trump’s inauguration, when their first instinct was to offer a deal: Europe would buy more American LNG and armaments. Trump understands that the EU not only lacks the means to counter his threats with action, but also that he can extract even more from them. In February, EU envoy Maroš Šefčovič proposed during a meeting with Howard Lutnick a plan to mutually slash the tariffs to zero. But that’s not enough for Washington. The U.S. wants to dismantle the regulatory framework that acts as a set of non-tariff barriers, or, in President Trump’s words, “rules and regulations that are just designed for one reason: that you can’t sell your product in those countries. And we’re not gonna let that happen.”
Trump is attacking the one thing the Brussels elite still wholeheartedly believe in: the EU’s status as a regulatory empire. This idea is most clearly articulated in Anu Bradford’s book The Brussels Effect, which the author describes as “an effort to correct the misperceptions about the EU’s decline”. It’s true that the EU struggles with immigration, has no clear strategy for stemming the tide of populism, lacks the capacity to become a serious military actor, and has failed to meaningfully boost its economy. Maybe it has bumped from crisis to crisis, yet it retains one decisive advantage: the ability to shape the world’s regulatory landscape.
Thanks to its large internal market, the rules imposed by EU regulators must be followed by anyone seeking access to European consumers. The EU’s high regulatory standards often lead to global adoption, as companies prefer to comply with the strictest rules rather than produce different versions of a product for different markets. This dynamic is the essence of the “Brussels Effect”.
It seems that Trump has no intention of backing down until the EU’s regulatory system is dismantled. Would this pressure be liberating for Europeans as well? It’s hard to imagine Brussels removing, for example, environmental requirements for U.S. manufacturers of cars with internal combustion engines while maintaining them for European ones.
Trump’s second term may become a moment of reckoning for the EU. Strategic autonomy is revealing itself for what it truly is — the last ideological expression of France’s yearning for grandeur. Confrontation with Trump will likely force the Brussels elite to revise, if not entirely abandon, the regulatory superpower project. Another casualty will be the myth of European solidarity: countries will prioritise their own interests, breaking ranks with the EU to secure investment or tariff exemptions, favouring multi-alignment over subordination to Brussels. The harsh lesson is that, in a world of geopolitical carnivores, the EU must choose between adaptation and irrelevance.
