Current Accounts: The Hinrich Foundation Trade Podcast
Trump’s war on trade: What’s next for Europe?
Published 18 February 2025
In this special edition of Current Accounts, the Hinrich Foundation’s podcast on global trade, the US Association of Foreign Press Correspondents sits down with Senior Research Fellow Keith Rockwell to discuss how Europe plans to deal with Trump and the impact on the world’s most important alliance.
Tune in to this special episode hosted by the US Association of Foreign Press Correspondents:
On 10 February, Donald Trump announced a 25% tariff on aluminum and steel imports, followed days later by a plan for "reciprocal tariffs." As promised during his campaign, he plans to expand his tariff blanket further. Europe's longstanding alliance with the US is in crisis. While European leaders claim they are better prepared for Trump’s second term, the reality is they are in a far weaker position than in his first.
With a major war on its eastern border, crushing energy costs, and political turmoil roiling the union’s anchor members Germany and France, stability across the continent is at risk as Trump forges ahead without the EU to cut a deal with Russia President Vladimir Putin.
Tune into this special podcast as Senior Research Fellow Keith Rockwell sits down the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents-USA to probe Europe’s strategy and the potential impact of Trump’s tariffs on the most important alliance in the world.
Rockwell’s recent research for the Hinrich Foundation explores Europe’s two-pronged approach to deal with Trump and his tariffs. The European Commission is preparing both carrots and sticks, seeking to strike trade deals or retaliate forcefully if necessary. Even as European leaders weigh retaliation against the US on LNG imports, investment in US manufacturing, and military purchases, many in Europe believe negotiation is the best path forward, aiming to avoid a tit-for-tat trade war by increasing imports from the US rather than facing broad restrictions on EU exports. There is a lot to lose on both sides of the Atlantic.
Here is an excerpt from their conversation:
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Alan Herrera: |
I was about to say, yeah, essentially there's this juxtaposition. You have one man who is really ushering in, I guess, this isolationist era of just general US policy, and you see how that's impacting trade, and its very protectionist. But I suppose what you mentioned just now about a collective, I see how there's this very individualistic mindset versus this collective mindset. And from my vantage point, I see that if we go back to World War II, for example, Europe is leveled. The US comes out ahead. We have things like the Marshall Plan, and then the US becomes the manufacturing capital. And as a result, and this of course leads into the American dream, and all of the other issues that we've had since then, people are, again, very disenchanted. We have this situation where essentially American people do not know that struggle. They do not know what it's like to have so much war and death on your soil, and they don't know how, again, a framework like the EU would need to exist or why this regulatory framework, this wider regulatory framework, has developed in response to these struggles. And it sounds like, especially where Trump is concerned, that this is just taken for granted on the American side. So it'll be interesting to see how we… well, again, just more friction. More friction. |
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Keith Rockwell: |
And sadly, there's a tendency on the part of too many politicians today, whether the issue is immigration or whether it's trade, or whether it's crime or whether it's geopolitics. The tendency is to blame foreigners for whatever the problems are, which of course is very easy because these are all very difficult problems that require a collective endeavor and require people to sit around and try and find an outcome that is satisfactory to everybody. And that takes hard work. |
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Alan Herrera: |
It does. Scapegoating is easier. |
Tune into the Hinrich Foundation’s podcast series for insights on international trade.
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Author
Keith M. Rockwell
Keith M. Rockwell is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation. Prior to his retirement in June 2022, Keith served as a Director at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and spokesperson for the organization for more than 25 years. He also is Global Fellow at the Wilson Center.
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