00:00We're just a few weeks into the new White House administration, and already Donald Trump
00:12is making good on his promises to gut U.S. federal agencies and apply tariffs against
00:18Mexico, China and Canada, although there is a negotiation around them.
00:22The EU is bracing itself to see what's next.
00:25For the Europe Conversation, I catch up with two experts who say the only people profiting
00:29from these actions are adversaries of the West.
00:35David Salvo and Rachel Dean-Wilson, both co-directors of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at
00:40the German Marshall Fund.
00:41David, you're an expert in Russia, and Rachel, an expert in U.S. policy.
00:46Thanks very much for joining us on the Europe Conversation.
00:48Rachel, can I start with you and ask you a little bit about tariffs?
00:52We have a wait-and-see policy in Brussels at the European Commission at the moment.
00:56Of course, there is preparations for the very likelihood that tariffs will materialize.
01:02What do you recommend?
01:03What would your advice be to the EU in relation to that, and what are the purpose of the tariffs,
01:08do you think?
01:09Yeah.
01:10I mean, I would look at what's going on now with tariffs, right?
01:12Look at kind of the opening bid with Canada, Mexico and China, and how that went for pointers
01:19for Europe on how to maybe negotiate and address this.
01:24Negotiate being the key word here.
01:25I think if we know anything about Donald Trump, it's about a deal.
01:29And so you should view kind of the opening tariff discussion as an opening discussion
01:34of a deal.
01:35And what do you think the point is for Donald Trump to apply tariffs, given that there is
01:40a strong consensus that this will impact Americans the most?
01:45It is a tool that he has expressed great love for.
01:51And I think it's something tangible that it's easy for him to explain.
01:56And that is easy to put out there as a starting negotiating tactic.
02:03I can't make the economic case for tariffs.
02:06And I'm not an economist.
02:07I don't think I could if I tried anyway.
02:10But I do think it is, from a messaging perspective, an effective tool for him.
02:17Is the message also Donald Trump saying to the European Union, we're not allies in the
02:21way that we have been in the past, that basically separating the two sides?
02:26I wouldn't go that far.
02:27I think we all understand that the president has certain views on what an alliance means.
02:33We saw this in his first administration with the notion of collective defense and the need
02:37for European allies to spend more of their budget on NATO and defense.
02:43I don't think necessarily that tariffs are a signal that he doesn't care about the alliance
02:50himself.
02:52I think the Europeans are probably taking it that way.
02:53And I understand.
02:54So this is not going to tell them not to take this personally.
02:56And I suppose tariffs, they really pale in insignificance when it comes to the existential
03:01crisis on the continent of Europe now, the war in Ukraine, Russian interference, and
03:06so on.
03:07Where do you think Trump's mind is at when it comes to that, protecting allies, being
03:12there shoulder to shoulder?
03:14I think Trump would love for the war to go away tomorrow.
03:18I think there's no utility in war raging in Ukraine for the United States.
03:25That is full stop.
03:26He also thinks that the war in Ukraine is, first and foremost, Europe's responsibility.
03:32That doesn't mean that the United States is going to immediately abdicate any sort of
03:36responsibility for supporting Ukraine.
03:38And in fact, there are signals that there are back channel discussions with Russia to
03:41see just how serious Russia is about negotiating.
03:44I think that message is probably being heard loud and clear at this stage.
03:48But what would that look like to you?
03:50Because a lot of people are saying there's no way that Ukraine will not be occupied to
03:55some degree, particularly in the east, Crimea and so on, that there may be some sort of
03:58frozen territory there, and then potentially security guarantees for unoccupied territories
04:02of Ukraine.
04:03But what do you think that the United States might want to extract from that?
04:07Because we've heard the conversation around raw minerals and what Ukraine might be able
04:12to provide for the United States.
04:14I think you just identified it.
04:16I don't believe that the administration sees much beyond that in terms of what Ukraine
04:22can provide the American people or the American interests.
04:26I mean, Trump himself has said many times, like, what do we care about Ukraine?
04:31Who cares?
04:32You know, it's not â this is not in our immediate interest.
04:35But there are.
04:36There are real economic and technological and all sorts of derivatives of, like, the
04:41raw mineral, raw material that Ukraine has that is probably at the forefront of the administration's
04:48thinking.
04:49Now, I also think that war is bad for business in many respects, too.
04:53And if we want to have sort of a Europe whole, free and at peace with a trade relationship
04:58that is beneficial in both directions, it's probably not advantageous for there to be,
05:03you know, a years-long war raging on the continent, too.
05:07Rachel, looking at the administration so far, there's been huge â I think people are
05:12quite shocked at what's happened in relation to staff at the FBI, the CIA, the Treasury,
05:20people's private information being handed over to people associated with Elon Musk,
05:24who is an unelected official.
05:26I mean, what does this mean in terms of the implications for citizens of the United States,
05:32the security of the United States, privacy and so on?
05:37We are still figuring out what it means.
05:39But the bottom line is Elon Musk has this special status, and so he can work a little
05:48outside of the government by also being associated with it.
05:52I think there have been already some lines that he has gone up to or crossed.
05:59There's discussion of lawsuits from different federal employees around some of the actions
06:03that have been taken.
06:05And that's one of the really interesting things about this period of time is that we are seeing
06:10a lot of these questions are going to be playing out in the courts.
06:15And so we've seen a Trump administration, the Department of Government and Officiacy,
06:21this outside department that Musk is heading, and inside the Trump administration through
06:27executive action and executive orders, really testing the bound of executive power.
06:32Rachel, I want to ask you about USAID.
06:35Elon Musk said he's putting it through the woodcutter.
06:37It's one of the most important organizations globally when it comes to the United States
06:41because it helps people in poverty, in war zones, in natural disasters, whether it's
06:46global warming, whether it's the Haitian earthquake.
06:50And he wants to end it all.
06:53Yeah, I mean, this is a great question.
06:55It's one of those situations where they just brought a hammer to something that we kind
07:00of need a chisel for.
07:02There is an overwhelming feeling that there is bloat in the federal government.
07:07I think that's true.
07:08I think you could go through any agency and pick out programs that don't need to be there,
07:12that we should not be spending taxpayer money on.
07:15In fact, in one of my previous jobs on the Hill, we would do a pork barrel spending report,
07:19right?
07:20And it was to go through to identify somewhat ridiculous projects that the federal government
07:24was funding.
07:26So this has long been just kind of a byproduct of a large government.
07:30So I think there is a reasonable desire to cut back on these government agencies.
07:40That's not â we've just seen a whole halting of something like USAID, where there are,
07:46as you said, very important programs for everyone around the world that are coming out of that
07:52agency.
07:53Would you have Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, depriving the poorest people
07:58of the world, people who are starving, homeless, suffering, whether it's climate change or
08:04natural disasters or war, stealing money and food out of their mouths?
08:08Yeah, I can't.
08:10I don't know.
08:11I don't know.
08:12I can't speak for Elon Musk, but I do know that one of the most popular things that Trump
08:16is doing in a general sense â again, I think if you go deep on any one of these policies,
08:23you get more resistance and pushback.
08:25But in a general sense, it is very popular to cut down on the size of the U.S. government.
08:29What's unfortunate, from a moral standpoint, is that there are these humanitarian programs
08:34that have had longstanding bipartisan support in the United States, and I think if you told
08:38most American citizens that we have a tiny fraction of the U.S. federal budget that is
08:45going to supporting HIV and AIDS health programs in Africa or providing food and clean water
08:54in real conflict zones, I don't think you would get much opposition to that.
08:58And that's why Republicans and Democrats have long supported this in Congress, right,
09:03and administrations of both parties.
09:05So from a moral standpoint, this is obviously horrible.
09:09From a practical, sort of pragmatic standpoint, too, this is just abdicating American leadership
09:15all over the world.
09:17So if the Trump administration's view is we want to lead peace â we want to achieve
09:22peace through strength, this is not the way to do it.
09:26What we're doing is we're alienating people, we're opening the doors to America's adversaries
09:30to fill in these leadership vacuums all over the world â in Latin America, in the Middle
09:35East, in Southeast Asia, like it's â in Africa, China and Russia are the ultimate
09:41benefactors of this policy, not the American people.
09:45And just on Russia, because you're obviously an expert on Russia, the problem with the
09:49CIA and the FBI laying people off and sort of diminishing their roles and degrading them
09:55in lots of ways, the way they â you know, it appears that, you know, the Trump administration,
09:59some of them are â they may be in government, but they still somehow are attacking government
10:03or agencies of the government.
10:05But what are the implications for security of the United States with a Russia that has
10:09already been interfering not just in America but all across Europe and all across the world?
10:13I mean, this sort of instability in American institutions, this sort of chaos, it's exactly
10:19what Russia wants and it's exactly what they exploit to amplify discord, to amplify polarization,
10:28to attack American leadership.
10:30This only plays to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping's advantage.
10:35It's what they want.
10:36They want democratic instability.
10:38They want a weak, distracted, internal turmoil in the United States specifically because
10:45it means we take our eye off the ball on our global responsibilities and Russia and China
10:51can prey on that.
10:52And David, final question to you.
10:54You know, we're talking about how Vladimir Putin is probably happy with the situation
10:58with, I suppose, Donald Trump in the United States, you know, reverting or becoming more
11:02isolationist in some ways.
11:05But the relations between the EU and America are also going to make him happy because there's
11:10nothing worse than the West being at loggerheads right now.
11:14You said it.
11:15I mean, if an alliance is divided, that plays to Russia's advantage.
11:19I mean, Vladimir Putin wants a divided alliance because it opens the door for Russian â more
11:27like-minded parties and politicians in Europe sort of wondering, well, if we can't get
11:34along with the United States, why don't we turn east again?
11:36Like, why don't we get Russian energy back here?
11:39Why don't we remove sanctions on Russia and have more normalized economic relations?
11:45We can't trust the United States anymore.
11:47That's exactly what Vladimir Putin wants.
11:49OK.
11:50David Salvo and Rachel Dean-Wilson from the German Marshall Fund, thank you very much
11:53for joining us on The Europe Conversation.
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