Trump’s election caused a shock in Europe. So great that the German newspaper Die Zeit accompanied it with a telling headline: “Fuck.” Further explanations are probably unnecessary. The reason is clear: the election will have severe negative consequences for the EU, the European economy, and competitiveness. This is mainly due to two aspects of Trump’s campaign promises: protectionist trade policy and the future of NATO and, consequently, the security of the European continent.
The first problem is not new; the EU experienced it during Trump’s previous term, but now, it seems, a version 2.0 on steroids is on the way. From the perspective of the U.S., the EU is the second biggest “culprit” for the trade imbalance, with only China recording a larger “deficit” in trade with the U.S. Therefore, the forecast is that the hardest-hit will be China (with potential tariffs up to 60%), followed by the EU and Mexico. All of this is, of course, happening at the worst possible time for the EU, as the German engine of growth seems to be faltering.
The second issue is also not new. The EU had enough time (but far too little political wisdom and will) to prepare for it: whether European NATO members will pay significantly more for defense and contribute more to the alliance, or whether they will face their own (security) fate. This, of course, will depend on how the war in Ukraine unfolds, the instability in the Middle East, and so on. Security crises abound in Europe’s vicinity, but there are no sufficient capabilities to effectively confront them. Regardless of how loudly French President Emmanuel Macron speaks about “strategic autonomy,” we can hardly find an industry or field where the EU is truly strategically autonomous. And defense capabilities are certainly not one of them.
Yet all these problems and the European shock at Trump’s election are still, first and foremost, a display of Europe’s own Eurocentrism. The old continent seems to still not understand who the real winner of World War II is; it seems not ready to face the fact that European colonialism (with all its ramifications, including cheap raw materials, exploitation of labor, and political influence) has been dead for more than 70 years. A new reality has emerged, in which a real geopolitical challenger to Pax Americana has appeared: China. And it will not be satisfied with the status quo; it will continuously challenge it and demand a different order.
Where is the EU in all of this, and what it truly thinks doesn’t matter much anymore. The soft power the EU still has (but is quickly squandering) doesn’t translate into military and political power that could decide war and peace in Europe, let alone globally. Therefore, our European problems with Trump are quite irrelevant to the wider world. This world will confront Trump 2.0’s challenges in its own way, as best it can. While in Europe we mourn the defeat of the indistinct Democrats with the Biden–Harris duo at the helm, Mexicans are preparing for a far larger (and potentially more fatal) tsunami. What do we know about this? Nothing or very little. Does it concern us? Well, not really. And similarly, it’s with other corners of the world, as they observe European reactions and frustrations.
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Therefore, it’s worth looking beyond the European shock and asking what kind of America Trump managed to sell to the majority of American voters. It’s not just trade or military-defense policy that influences the world; the reshaping of American society, political system, and economic model should interest us greatly. After all, political imitators aren’t lacking here either, let alone elsewhere in Europe. The wave of broader social experiments in the U.S. could quickly trigger similar tendencies elsewhere. We’ve already seen this with populist rhetoric, and now we could see it in real politics.
Do you still remember Thatcher’s neoliberal policy of austerity and the all-encompassing free market, with the drastic negative consequences of privatizing the public sector, which the British lower and middle class had to pay for decades? Why do I mention her specifically? Because, in comparison to what Trump 2.0 is promising Americans, Thatcherism will seem like a minor joke. A bedtime story.
Among Trump’s promised domestic policies, the most discussed here have been deportations and migration policy (the expulsion of millions of illegal migrants) and tax cuts. But there is much more. Much more. This is not about the conservative political Project 2025, which Trump has distanced himself from in recent months. No, with the so-called Project 47 Agenda, which he announced piece by piece in the months leading up to the elections, Trump was quite explicit. The future he predicts is dystopian, neoliberal, apocalyptic.
It’s a list of promises that gives us an excellent insight into Trump’s new brave (American) world. In it, there’s not only a tax cut (for example, for corporate profits), but also a 33% cut to the federal budget. What this means for the quality and scope of all possible public services and social programs, for which the U.S. is already not known, is up to anyone to decide. It’s not just about limiting migration or deportations, but also measures like stripping citizenship from children born to migrants in the U.S.! It’s not just deregulation and de-bureaucratization, but the establishment of ten so-called Freedom Cities, which will be entirely exempt from any government regulation. From here, it’s not far to a dystopian story from the movie The Purge, where criminality and access to firearms are dealt with by implementing (partial) decriminalization of violent acts. In Trump’s world, anything is possible. But even that’s not the end of the dystopia: homelessness would be criminalized, and all homeless people would be arrested and placed in so-called federal tent cities, where they would receive treatment and rehabilitation. Sounds familiar? Like copying the social order from Huxley’s Brave New World, in which the remnants of civilized Homo sapiens are confined to such tent cities and reservations, so they don’t disturb the new, beautiful social order.
But there’s more. Following the example of the Iranian moral police, Trump would also fight so-called anti-Christian bias, for which he announces the establishment of a special government service (so much for de-bureaucratization) and the introduction of prayer in public schools and Bible studies. And, of course, there’s the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, which is the logical consequence of the oil-gas delirium “drill, baby, drill” (even though the U.S. is already the world’s largest producer of liquid gold, which it also happily exports). But that’s not enough for Trump; he wants more. Measures in deregulation, energy, and climate naturally go hand in hand – toward full liberalization and the power of the invisible hand of the market. Naturally, Wall Street applauds.
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Dementus, the main antagonist in the film Furiosa (part of the Mad Max saga, released in spring this year), screams in the middle of the movie: “We will create order with chaos!” And it seems that Trump has heard him. What Trump is promising America is exactly that: the creation of a deregulated chaos, which will, in the end, make the poor and aggrieved (and there are many in the U.S.) even poorer, angrier, and more aggrieved. It will make them furious. But, of course, for this situation, Trump will not be to blame, but the new-old “enemies”: the deep state, migrants, LGBTQ… Meanwhile, the rich will become even richer. And not rich in the sense of the higher middle class, no. When we say rich, we mean people like Elon Musk or Miriam Andelson, among others, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and an ultra-right-wing advocate for Israel and the destruction of Palestine.
In this light, we should also view the appointments of Trump’s cabinet members, which we are witnessing these days. The interpretation that this is merely about returning favors and support during the election campaign is wrong. It’s much more than that. These are people whom Trump is counting on to bring his vision to life (in this light, the appointment of the famous anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health minister doesn’t seem so coincidental). Will they succeed?
We will see in four years. But we already know that the U.S. is facing one of the largest social experiments in its history. Trump’s political engineering could shake the U.S. to its core, and all the way to its dystopian extremes. Therefore, perhaps God Save the U.S.A. would be a more fitting version of the patriotic “blessed” original.
Originally published in Večer on November 23, 2024.