All over Europe, heads are exploding at the reality of Donald Trump’s election. Unlike 2016, which was considered a freak aberration that could be waited out and resisted, the implications for Europe’s elite are far more serious this time.
Europe’s leftist leaders have no clue how to react and who to call. More importantly, they don’t know how to talk to Trump and his recent cabinet selections because they have been shunning and ignoring Trump’s supporters and those who talk and think like him for so long.
But Europe is about to be on the receiving end of a bold, aggressive American economic, cultural, and national security agenda. Ignoring it won’t be an option. Waiting it out won’t be possible. Trump may only have four years in office, but he has fundamentally realigned American politics. The Republican Party has been purged of those who sought to distract or undermine his agenda. The Democrats are staggering around like besotted fusiliers crying in bewilderment at their overwhelming rout.
What’s worse for the elites running Brussels? Trump is going to get more popular with each day in Europe. And the people of Europe who have consistently voted to reject the ever-increasing centralization of power among EU bureaucrats will only grow more and more angry when they see an energetic American President delivering for his citizens while Europe’s ruling class wonder why they don’t understand what’s good for them.
How long will Europe’s citizens tolerate astronomical energy prices and a war on farmers, when Trump pursues and delivers energy dominance for the United States that will lead to the cheapest energy prices for any citizenry in the world?
When the U.S. dominates the race for Artificial Intelligence, not just because it attracts talent and investment to a low-tax environment, but because America has cheap energy to power AI servers, do Europe’s elites think the continent’s young talented entrepreneurs will be inspired by the next platitude about transitioning to a green energy economy?
Donald Trump’s victory came in the face of universal opposition from the mainstream media and fueled by social media—his own TruthSocial and Elon Musk’s X. Meanwhile, the UK is jailing its citizens for social media posts, and leading politicians in Germany call for more censorship. What do Europe’s leaders think will be the U.S. government’s response? Jews are being hunted in the home of Anne Frank and Europeans are worried about social media posts? Do they think that Trump’s team will respect thinking like that? Do they think Europe’s citizens will tolerate it if Trump starts speaking out about it on social media or when he brings it up on state visits?
And how long will the citizens of Europe tolerate these far-left policies while they consistently lag the United States overall, and even the states that make it up, when it comes to GDP growth.
Leaders in Europe will continue to pursue their leftist agenda at their own peril because they’ve lost any shred of leverage they think they have.
If Trump wants to, he can eat Europe’s lunch, he could pick at specific aspects of Europe’s punitive tax policies. A good place to start would be to grant the UK’s new non-dom tax refugees special visas to relocate to the United States if they invest some of their money in the creation of American jobs. If the UK hates its foreign investors so much, maybe he’ll create a haven for them. Such a move could raise revenue for the U.S., expose the foolishness of muddle-headed policy, and benefit the U.S.
Trump can run those drills all day long. Unless Europe recognizes that they are out of step with the world’s dominant superpower, they will end up left behind by a new American political alignment.
When we first started the EU-US Forum last spring, our goal was to bring awareness to the radical ideas coming from the leftists running Europe to prevent them from spreading to the United States. We were seeking to be a bulwark for freedom of speech, energy dominance, and secure borders against the push by Brussels bureaucrats to take the continent in the wrong direction.
President Trump’s resounding victory, however, gives us a new opportunity. Now is not the time to play defense. Now is not only the time to stand up to the bad ideas coming out of Europe, but to spread the historic agenda that will permeate from Washington under this new administration to our friends overseas. Europeans are yearning for the reckoning that Donald Trump will bring, and their leaders have ignored their needs for far too long. The EU-US Forum looks forward to being at the forefront of the movement to bring the Trump agenda to Europe in the years ahead.
