Here's how it works you spineless foreign bastards. We aren't interested in subsidized NATO or your stupid war against Vlad. If you want to join the fight against something IMP then join us in threatening Xi Jinping with tariffs so they finally play fair. Else we're coming for you with the heavy timber.
Have a nice day!
Trump’s Return Leaves Europe on Its Own
The Continent can no longer count on the U.S. for unconditional security support.
By William A. Galston, WSJ
Jan. 14, 2025 2:44 pm ET
Europe is beset by troubles, and the policies of the incoming Trump administration will deepen them.
During his first term, Donald Trump insisted that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s European members pay more for their own defense. While 23 NATO nations are now in compliance with the target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, they remain far short of what it would take to defend themselves without America’s security guarantee.
Europe wasn’t always this weak. In 1988, West Germany’s army had nearly half a million soldiers; today, Germany’s active-duty army numbers only about 180,000. The army in the 1980s was equipped with more than 2,000 battle-ready tanks; today, only a few hundred are operational. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, reunified Germany largely disarmed. So did countries throughout Western Europe. Governments gave priority to social programs over defense.
Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a reorientation of Germany’s defense posture. It didn’t last long. Berlin’s 2025 budget included a modest increase of $1.3 billion for defense, and spending on military aid to Ukraine was cut in half from 2024’s level. This year Germany will give all families, regardless of income, a benefit payment of more than $3,000 per child—payable for offspring as old as 18 and in some cases 25. Annually, Germany will spend as much on that benefit alone as on defense. The country last year spent only 2.12% of its GDP on defense, compared with 27% on its social safety net.
Germany’s economic affairs minister has defended Germany’s expansive welfare state as necessary to “keep the country together” amid internal political strife and the rise of the populist right. If he’s correct, this bodes ill for the future of Germany’s willingness to contribute more to defense. Mr. Trump, meantime, insists the 2% defense spending threshold is too low. Something has to give, and it may be America’s security guarantee for European countries that can’t or won’t make hard fiscal choices.
Europe and the U.S. are also likely to collide on trade. Campaigning last fall, Mr. Trump said that “our allies treat us actually worse than our so-called enemies.” He elaborated: “In the military, we protect them, and then they screw us on trade.” His policies may trigger a trade war with the European Union.
The EU isn’t in a strong negotiating position. Its members are divided about the best response to Mr. Trump’s threats. France and Germany, its traditional leaders, are hobbled by weak governments. French President Emmanuel Macron’s disastrous decision to call elections last summer left him without a parliamentary majority. Mr. Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party is expected to lose next month’s German election to the center-right Christian Democrats and their allies, the Christian Social Union, after which it could take months to negotiate a new coalition.
Meanwhile, the crown jewel of European manufacturing—its automobile industry—is in crisis. In 2011 Europe produced 26% of all cars globally, well ahead of China and the U.S. Now China leads with 33% of the world’s production, while Europe’s share has fallen to 19%. The U.S. share remained roughly stable during this period.
European car manufacturers have lost their technological lead to China. European governments pushed electric vehicles, but the auto industry was slow to make the transition. This technological lag was sustainable as long as European exports of gasoline-powered vehicles to China remained robust. But now that China is rapidly shifting to EV production, Europe’s exports to China are shrinking. Worse, Chinese EVs now lead the world in technology and price, and China’s production capacity has outstripped its domestic demand.
This will likely result in a surge of Chinese exports, which higher U.S. tariffs will divert to Europe. This in turn will force Europe to choose between raising tariffs on Chinese imports, provoking Chinese countermeasures, and permitting the evisceration of its own auto industry.
In recent decades, Western European nations have made a series of bets that haven’t paid off. They assumed that they could remain economically competitive while government spending and regulatory burdens increased. They assumed that relations with Russia would remain manageable and that the flow of cheap Russian energy would continue. They assumed that they could absorb a record flow of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa without disrupting social stability. Above all, they assumed that the trans-Atlantic alliance would endure indefinitely and that the U.S. would never tire of bearing a disproportionate burden for Europe’s defense.
As these bets failed, Europe’s citizens became dissatisfied with the dominant parties of the center left and center right and turned to right-wing populist-nationalists. For different reasons, voters in the U.K. and U.S. did as well.
Joe Biden is the last U.S. president for whom the trans-Atlantic alliance was a visceral commitment. Mr. Trump’s return to power proves that for most Americans, the postwar world is no longer living history. Everything depends on what replaces it.
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