Europe is soul-searching in the midst of an increasingly complex and unstable global geopolitical environment. The EU is the world’s largest single market and the euro is its second-most used currency. Nevertheless, its capacity to speak with a common voice and exert influence in the new reality of a multi-polar world is conditioned and limited by its comparatively modest success in the economic sphere, but also by the lack of a true political union, as well as common positions and capacity in defence and security issues.

Until recently, the European project was advancing in the context of a reasonably stable and predictable “pecking order” set of international relations. The US was the undisputed global leader and Europe’s foremost ally, both in the economic as well as in the political and security sphere. In the economic arena, while aspiring to catch up to the US, Europe was resigned to a mutually beneficial and close relationship, characterized however by US dominance, where it could never really challenge its secondary position. In this context, US economic policy would take full advantage of the “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar as global reserve currency.

At the same time, however, the EU did not have to worry about the fundamental tenets of the positive US position towards the European project. After all, post-Second World War, the US had played a constructive role in the creation of the EU and accompanied its every step since (Steil 2018). It was also taken for granted that the US, as the main architect of the post war open, multilateral and rules-based international order, was the champion of its core elements, which are also central to the EU project: open markets, free trade and cooperation based on common rules and driven by international institutions.

The US as a disruptor

The new US administration under President Trump has radically transformed this environment, putting into question all the underlying assumptions about US– EU relations. In a startling break with his predecessors, the US president has openly sided with those forces in Europe that seek to stop, reverse or quit the European project.