00:00U.S. President Donald Trump is attacking his closest allies,
00:04threatening to slap them with tariffs.
00:06He's counting on the fact that they need the U.S.
00:10But do they?
00:11And what retaliatory strategies are they already considering?
00:14I'm Eli Stokuls.
00:15I cover the White House and foreign affairs at Politico.
00:18Along with colleagues all across Europe,
00:20we have been covering the possible responses from the world
00:23to a much more aggressive American administration.
00:27Just months ago, no one would have ever been thinking
00:29about how to make the U.S. feel some pain.
00:32It just wasn't on the table, but it is now.
00:34So there's government responses and then there's private sector responses
00:38and public consumer responses.
00:40On the defense side, the biggest question for Europe
00:43is really America's reliability.
00:45He's threatened Europe with essentially walking away from NATO
00:47if countries don't pay more of their GDP toward defense.
00:51So when Donald Trump says spend more on defense, Europe says yes.
00:55But there's also an awareness.
00:57Our reporting says for people in Europe,
00:58they're saying, in the first term, we thought we could appease Donald Trump
01:02by doing deals, sending more money to the United States.
01:05That no longer seems to be the case,
01:07because countries that have done everything that the U.S. wanted
01:11have still drawn Trump's ire.
01:13Poland is by far spending more on defense than any other NATO member.
01:18They are right on Putin's doorstep.
01:20They have continued to buy a ton of defensive equipment, material weapons from the United States.
01:27We're talking around $30 billion a year.
01:30Poland is not in the doghouse.
01:34Happy birthday to you.
01:37May all your dreams come true, Mr. President.
01:40And yet, in Poland, the leaders are rethinking how much they can rely on the United States.
01:47Our reporter in Poland noticed that for the first time that they could ever remember,
01:51there were posters across Warsaw linking Putin and Trump sort of culturally and publicly
01:57to be suddenly seeing signs of anti-American sentiment in Poland,
02:02a place that has been as pro-American as any country in Europe.
02:05That is a sign that even though the government is not in a position to jeopardize its relationship
02:11with the United States, that public opinion, if it's changing in Poland,
02:13it's changing fast all across Europe.
02:15And I think that is largely in response to the way Trump has tried to use American weapons system
02:21as leverage over Ukraine.
02:23And there were questions in Poland and in other places across Europe
02:27about whether it makes sense to continue buying F-35s.
02:30If they get mad at us, can they deny us the equipment that we need to repair
02:35these planes? Can they deny us the technological updates that we need to keep flying these planes?
02:40Europe does have other options. France builds fighter jets.
02:44There's also an anti-missile defense system that the Europeans have made.
02:49That is now being seen as a replacement for Patriot missile defense systems.
02:54The procurement time can vary. The delivery time can vary.
02:58But Europe is also trying to build these things faster to lessen the reliability on Washington.
03:04Ultimately, it will be harder for the U.S. to get the Europeans to do the things that
03:09American governments want them to do, whether that's helping contain China economically,
03:13whether that's responding, you know, militarily, joining an alliance in the event
03:17of an actual hot war somewhere, perhaps in Taiwan or some other part of Eastern Europe.
03:24For the entirety of American history, we have depended on allies.
03:28NATO is an organization that was formed after World War II. And the central article in the
03:34charter, Article 5, dictates that an attack on one country is an attack on all. And so with Europe
03:41and the United States being aligned, there's been peace for eight decades because nobody has wanted to
03:48test Article 5, with the exception of 9-11. And NATO allies responded and fought alongside the United States.
03:57The other reason that alliances are important, when the U.S. military decides that it needs to
04:02carry out an operation, say, in the Middle East, a lot of those troops, the people who are actually
04:07flying the planes, dropping the bombs, manning the drones, those people are based out of Europe.
04:13They're based in other countries, other parts of the world. And those forward operating bases allow
04:18a faster response. And so having countries willing to have an American military presence on the ground
04:24helps not just American security but global security. If the defense relationship deteriorates and
04:29Europe decides that they can't rely on America to defend them if they're attacked, then that also
04:34impacts the economic relationship. Technology is another area where Europe has realized sort of an
04:41over-reliance on American technology, American companies. The EU has passed a lot of digital services
04:47regulations trying to rein in some of these companies. And if American companies like X, for example,
04:53are not willing to abide by the EU's laws, they could see themselves banned. The Dutch, they've approved
04:58funding to build a lot of tech infrastructure that is Dutch. There are always concerns about the
05:03sensitivity or security of data wherever it goes. But I think there's new concerns because that data
05:09is in the hands of American companies. Beyond what governments are doing, we're seeing anti-U.S.
05:15sentiment across Europe and Canada and other parts of the world rise in pretty stunning ways. There is
05:22real frustration with a lot of the titans of American tech aligning themselves so closely with
05:28this administration, this president. And so do consumers decide that I don't really need my X account
05:33or my Meta account anymore? I don't really need to buy this on Amazon. I can find it somewhere else.
05:38Suddenly you have people just no longer wanting to buy American products. Things like Florida
05:44orange juice or bourbon from Kentucky. Things specifically American and from Republican or
05:49red states in particular. There's far fewer sales of Teslas happening across Europe. There's also an
05:55impact potentially on tourism. A lot of Europeans like traveling to the United States, especially in
06:00the summer months. It's not just the tariffs, but it's also concerns about visas and immigration. And
06:06is the United States going to allow certain people in? Are they going to hassle you at the border?
06:10All of these things have a negative effect on tourism and on commerce, really, because these are
06:16hurting the economic relationship on both sides of the Atlantic. So Europe is considering ways to
06:23make the American public feel the pain if this trade war continues. Export tariffs are something that
06:29the EU has discussed. It's kind of middle ground between the initial round of counter tariffs and
06:36going nuclear, so to speak, with the anti-coercion instrument that the EU established in 2023.
06:42It would basically start a long process that sets out how Europe would retaliate to tariffs. It starts
06:49by establishing a such a mechanism for conversations. It can go up to counter tariffs. It can take away
06:55intellectual property protections for American products in Europe, all kinds of things that are
07:00aimed at forcing the US to stand down in a trade war. It was conceived to protect against economic
07:08coercion by China, but it struck us as just remarkable that in European capitals people were even talking
07:15about this as something that could be deployed against the US. One thing that has really unnerved allies is
07:20the imperialist ambitions that Trump has expressed. Talking about Greenland and annexing Canada.
07:30Canada has a huge trading relationship with the United States. Oil, number one importer of crude oil,
07:35coming from Alberta to the United States. Cars, automobiles, there's a piece manufactured in this
07:40country, a piece manufactured in that country, put together in the United States. There's also Canadian
07:45timber. American construction industry gets a ton of lumber from Canada. If the trade war continues,
07:52house construction is going to get much, much more expensive, and that is going to have a big impact.
07:58There are a number of northern states in the Great Lakes region and in New England that rely heavily
08:03on energy from Canada powering their grid. And the Canadian government has talked about shutting off the
08:09electricity. And so that is a really punitive measure that Canadians would probably never have been
08:15considering until you have an American president imposing high tariffs and talking about annexation.
08:20Foreign policy observers are definitely noticing that, you know, in the aggregate,
08:26alienating allies runs the risk of putting it on a platter for China to make inroads with long-time
08:33US allies. And so we've seen the leader of Spain travel to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping, and we may see
08:39more of that. At some point, if America forces Europe to choose and makes the relationship with
08:46Washington sort of prohibitive, then that is a natural place for those countries to go.
08:51The future is really in more doubt than ever. I think people see in Trump 2.0 a person who is even
08:59more willing to actually push the button. And we've seen the entire world economy convulse as a result of
09:06Trump's zigging and zagging on trade. Allies realize there is a long way to go and they're really bracing
09:13for more shocks.
Comments