If Margaret’s query expressed a hope that the Democrats’ blue wave could transform Europe’s fortunes after two years of Maga-induced trauma, she was probably not alone. The resounding defeat for Donald Trump’s Republicans and the installation of a Democratic-controlled US Congress has been met with understandable relief in European capitals. In the short term however, the worst for Europe is not over.
Trump didn’t need congressional approval, after all, to unleash a trade war on his supposed European allies, threaten to invade Greenland, try to stitch up Ukraine or go to war with Iran, an act that has inflated fuel and food prices disastrously. Hemmed in now on domestic policy, the US president may, many European leaders fear, use his extensive foreign policy powers to become even more confrontational on the world stage. Europe, warned Nathalie Tocci, is exactly where Trump will lash out.
Now that those foes have made a comeback at home, Trump’s rancour towards Europe is likely to grow.” The lashing out could come in the form of new tariff chaos. As the humiliated Maga figurehead (one Washington expert likened the movement now to “a cornered ferret”), Trump could veto aid for Ukraine and thwart Kyiv’s access to defence technology. Paul Taylor sketched a fearful scenario in which he could even attempt a carve-up of eastern Europe in the so-called “big, beautiful deal” for Ukraine that he says he is working on with Russia.
The omens for Europe were poor as US-mediated talks opened in Abu Dhabi, with delegates from Germany, France, the UK and the EU, literally sidelined. Nor can Europe rely on the new intake of congressional Democrats to challenge Trump on its behalf, Blanche Leridon of the Institut Montaigne thinktank in Paris, tells me. Their foreign policy is, at this point, difficult to decipher.
There isn’t a single, consistent position between the more progressive and centrist factions when it comes to either Europe or Ukraine specifically.” We can’t even assume that nationalist populist parties, encouraged by Trump to destroy the EU from the inside, will suffer by their association with him. True, in central and eastern Europe, where the Maga spirit was heavily promoted by Viktor Orbán, some incumbents may have to perform a pivot. Poland’s conservative president Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the opposition Eurosceptic Law and Justice party and has vaunted his proximity to Trump, is now facing awkward questions.
And in Czechia, which has one of the most pro-Maga governments in Europe, populist PM Andrej Babiš and his far-right coalition partners, the Motorists party, have faced a wave of grassroots protests lately. In Italy meanwhile, the far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni played up tensions with Trump months ago, a strategic move to allay the concerns of voters, the majority of whom despise him. But in countries where populists have not yet been in government and are polling at record levels, Trump’s humiliation may not matter to voters, even if their grievances – such as stagnant pay, inflation and lack of affordable housing – are often driven by global forces.
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