CCI posted this article in its entirety with the permission of the author.
By Gilbert Doctorow, Center for Citizen Initiatives, 8/7/25
Today’s European media carry the story of the agreement on tariffs that Ursula von der Leyen reached with Donald Trump at their Scotland meeting. In France, we hear that not only Marine Le Pen, on the Right, but Emmanuel Macron’s Centrist prime minister Francois Bayrou denounced the agreement, suggesting that France will oppose ratification. German chancellor Friedrich Merz called it ‘a black day for Europe’ but hinted that he will reluctantly back the agreement as the best that could be achieved under the circumstances.
Today’s leading French-language daily in Belgium Le Soir carried a front page editorial on the subject. It stated openly that this trade deal will greatly damage national economies across Europe which are already experiencing stagnation for more than two years. They predict that large flows of investment will now be directed by European manufacturers to the United States, meaning that jobs will be created there while they are lost here. They place the blame for the unequal relations with the USA which made it possible for Trump to win the tariff war on Europe’s excessive dependence on exports to maintain growth instead of promoting domestic demand. However, the editors willfully ignore the reality that the Chinese economy is also export driven and is doing very nicely, with more than 5% annual GDP growth.
The editorial board makes no mention of the way the trade deal ensures that European goods will be uncompetitive on world markets for years to come by obliging the EU to purchase still greater quantities of American gas and oil. If the deindustrialization of the German economy can be attributed to any single factor today it is precisely the switch from cheap Russian pipeline gas for very expensive LNG gas from the United States, Qatar and other global suppliers.
The Soir editorial notes that part of the logic in agreeing to Trump’s trade terms was to keep the American president engaged with them. Engaged over what? The editorial gives a slight hint at what I see also in other European media: that the engagement is over continued military and financial support to Ukraine in its war with Russia. There, indeed, is the key to understanding how and why European economic sovereignty is being sacrificed with only a few tears shed.
Note the disappearance from European media of their recent gloating over an imagined U.S. brain drain to these shores as American professors seek to immigrate to Europe in protest over Trump’s threats to university independence.
We cannot be certain that von der Leyen will triumph over all the objectors to what she has agreed with Trump. However, the objectors may be bought off by some small corrections to her deal at the margins. France, for example, may get a better tariff on its champagne and Bordeaux wines.
In an essay on these pages a few days ago, I referred to my recommendation to Europe’s leaders 10 years ago when they were first seriously discussing creating a European army: “what Europe needs is not a new army but a new foreign policy.” The same kind of recommendation is in order today: “what Europe needs is not stimulus to domestic consumption to bring back growth but a new foreign policy.”
The new foreign policy must be based first on a glance at the map, at who is Europe’s big neighbor to the East.
Russia happens to be a nuclear super power that is fast becoming a conventional weapons super power while also becoming a major global economic force. Russia in the last year roared past Germany to become Europe’s largest economy and the fourth largest economy in the world. Common sense and a Realist approach to the conduct of international affairs dictate that some accommodation has to be sought with that neighbor rather than the ongoing policy of building barbed wire and 4 meter high concrete barriers against the neighbor with whom you do not deign to talk and allocating hundreds of billions of euros to expanding European production of tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles, drones and air defense units.
I have been rereading my notes on a very interesting conference in Varna, Bulgaria that I attended ten years ago. The sponsor was the Bulgarian office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the think tank of the SPD, the Social Democrats of Germany. The keynote address was delivered by a certain Hannes Swoboda, an Austrian Member of the European Parliament who had for 3 years been chaired the bloc of Socialists and Democrats, the second largest group of deputies in the Parliament. Swoboda was no apologist for Putin, but he told us all that Europe had to rethink how it deals with Russia. The values based approach to international dealings is fine within the European Union, he said. Each Member State can and should intervene in the internal affairs of other Member States when they violate shared values. But de facto, Europe practiced Realpolitik in its dealings with many countries around the world, for example the Gulf States. Why, he asked, cannot the same common sense approach be applied to its relations with Russia instead of the hectoring, the attempts to punish and isolate Russia for not living up to Europe’s values?
Why indeed?
The fact of the matter today is that Mr Trump’s USA is showing in every way that it is no friend of Europe, that it sees Europe as a geopolitical and economic competitor and will do anything to trip up European ambitions in both sectors.
Today’s European presidents and prime ministers who do not respond to this threat from the USA and do not respond to the opportunity for advantageous trading relations with Russia to obtain, as in the past, critical raw materials at prices that are affordable, such ‘leaders’ are enemies of their own peoples and should be voted out of office or impeached at the earliest opportunity.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025