Europe fears it occupies a special place in ‘Trump hell’

Tensions between the Trump administration and Europe are reaching a fever pitch ahead of next month’s NATO summit, on the heels of President Donald Trump’s announcement of tariffs against European allies and his comments denouncing the transatlantic alliance.

“There is a Trump’s hell where NATO is as bad as NAFTA and EU worse than China,” a senior European official said. “The transatlantic relationship, which all around the table we consider a given, is not a given.”

The official added, “We now have a major crisis.”

The official’s comments came after the G7 meeting in Canada earlier this month, when Trump told the G7 leaders that “NATO is as bad as NAFTA,” according to a diplomat from a G7 country. Axios was first to report the Trump remark, which stands in stark contrast to the sunny image US officials try to convey as they insist that relations with Europe are just fine.

But Trump’s announcement that he would slap steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU, Canada and Mexico, and his harsh criticism of those countries, now has many of America’s closest allies openly questioning the reliability of the United States. European officials are promising retaliation and are concerned about a trade war.

Trump has been trying to divide European allies, offering French President Emmanuel Macron a favorable free trade agreement if France pulled out of the EU, a European official said, an offer he reportedly made to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well, and has promised to Britain in the wake of Brexit.

Concern about a repeat

Moreover, European officials say that Trump is conflating his firm belief that the United States is being taken advantage of in its trade relationships with US participation in NATO, whose members he views as free riders who don’t contribute enough to the alliance’s collective defense.

“The president has been extremely consistent in his criticizing of the alliance and he has not changed his narrative,” the European official said.

Several European diplomats have expressed concern that the upcoming NATO summit could be a repeat of last year, when Trump lectured everyone about defense spending and downplayed the importance of the alliance.

“There is no reason why we should not have an animated NATO summit,” the European official joked.”The administration is doing some damage control in the European capitals, but they are also saying that they don’t know what President Trump is going to do or say.”

While they do not know what to expect at the summit, European diplomats fear it will resemble the recent G7 meeting, which ended with Trump tweeting insults about the host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, slamming the policies proposals of G7 allies as “fool trade” and refusing to sign the joint communique issued at the summit’s close. Merkel described the President’s actions as “depressing.”

After the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump will visit the United Kingdom before traveling to Helsinki for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Diplomats said they worried about the optics of a tense NATO meeting followed by a friendly meeting between Trump and Putin, which could be damaging to the alliance and aid Putin in his quest to divide NATO.

‘Everything in possible’

“The administration has been doing damage control and saying ‘don’t worry, we will be extremely firm.’ But again we don’t know … everything is possible,” the European official said. “Nobody knows. So that’s, I think, the first concern.”

In a recent interview with CNN, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo downplayed talk of a rift between the US and Europe, calling it “most overstated.” He said that while concerns about US actions may pose “challenges,” they are “in line with the kind of discussions that the United States and Europe have had for decades.”

European leaders have indicated clearly and publicly that they don’t see the relationship with the Trump administration as business as usual. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, took to Twitter after the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and threatened Europe with tariffs.

“Looking at the latest decisions of Trump, someone could even think: With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Tusk tweeted in May. That same month, Merkel said it was clear that the EU “can’t completely rely on the US and UK,” a statement that hinted at the deep cracks that have developed in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Pomepo, however, said he spoke with “great frequency” to his Canadian and European allies in which the conversations are “aimed at achieving a shared set of objectives. ”

“There are so many things where we share common values and common concerns,” he said. “But in the end, the traditional value-driven alliance between Europe and the United States, that transatlantic alliance will remain strong as it has for coming on 70 years now.”