Trump’s war on Europe should not surprise anyone

Has there been a more cataclysmic year for US-Europe relations than 2025? It began with J.D. Vance’s “sermon” to EU leaders at the Munich Security Conference last month, in which he berated Western Europe for its policies on immigration and free speech. This year has also seen the growing threat of NATO falling apart after 76 years of peace in Western Europe, with the White House seemingly tilting toward Russia and Trump demanding that alliance members such as Germany, France, and the U.K. dramatically increase their defense spending.

This week, as the Trump administration imposes tariffs on Europe and Europe retaliates, there are even signs of a full-scale trade war. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s likely next chancellor, says it’s “clear that the Americans… this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.” Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron declared in a national address last week, “The innocence of the last thirty years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is now over.”

No one should be the least bit surprised. As early as 1990, in a now-infamous Playboy magazine interview, Donald Trump railed against German cars and complained about “being ripped off so badly by our so-called allies.” In Michael Wolff’s Siege: Trump Under Fire, the president is described as having long sought to “undermine NATO”: “Trump wanted to undermine Europe as a whole. In his mind, if not also in some covert understanding, Trump had realigned the power axis from Europe to Russia, and was now, in Russia’s interest if not at its behest, trying to weaken Europe.” The book was published in 2019.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Europe,” was Trump’s most visible adversary during his first term. Even before he took office, when Time magazine named her Person of the Year in 2015, Trump lashed out on Twitter, saying they had “picked [the] person who is ruining Germany.” As the 2016 US election neared, German media hit back, with Der Spiegel calling Trump “the leader of a new, hate-filled authoritarian movement” and warning that “nothing would be more harmful to the idea of the West and world peace than if he were to be elected president.” France’s Libération put it more bluntly: “Trump: From nightmare to reality.”

It was a reality Merkel soon had to face. From the start, her relationship with Trump wasn’t just distant — it was downright hostile. Reflecting on their first meeting in 2017, Merkel recalled, “We spoke on two different levels. Trump on an emotional level, me on a factual one… When he paid attention to my arguments, it was usually only in order to construct new accusations from them.” Before the world’s press, Trump refused to shake Merkel’s hand, and after reporters had left, he reportedly turned to her and said, “Angela, you owe me one trillion dollars.”

Germany’s low NATO contributions — about 1.25 percent of GDP — had long been an obsession of Trump’s. NATO membership required each country to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, but at the time, only four European countries — Estonia, Latvia, the UK, and Greece — met that threshold.

Trump’s frustration wasn’t unique. President Obama voiced similar concerns in 2014, and one “senior German official” later admitted to journalist Susan B. Glasser that “Not all of what [Trump] says is wrong… Europe has been free-riding for some time.” But while past US presidents had pushed for change diplomatically, Trump did so with open contempt.

After their meeting, Merkel flew back to Germany with a sinking feeling. “I didn’t have a good feeling,” she later said. “I concluded from my conversations: There would be no joint work for a networked world with Trump.” In Trump’s eyes, however, “joint work” meant Europe continuing to “rip off” the U.S. through NATO underpayments and trade deficits while simultaneously lecturing him on morality. It was a double insult he couldn’t stand.

Following a tense G7 summit in May 2017, Merkel declared that Europe needed to “really take our fate into our own hands… the times in which we could fully rely on others — they are somewhat over.” But this sentiment didn’t extend to Germany’s energy ties with Russia. When Trump warned in 2018 that Germany was becoming too dependent on Russian gas, Merkel’s cabinet laughed him off. After Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, that laughter stopped.

Tensions between the Trump White House and Europe ran through 2018 like a thread. At the G7 summit that June in Canada, Trump bluntly asked, “Why do we need [NATO]?” and called for Russia — expelled from the G7 after annexing Crimea — to be reinstated. A standoff between him and Merkel was captured in a now-iconic photo: Merkel, arms planted on the table, looking like an exasperated teacher; Trump, leaning back with crossed arms, looking like a defiant student. Days later, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas condemned Trump’s “egoistic policy of ‘America First’” and fumed that “alliances dating back decades are being challenged in the time it takes to write a tweet.”

Trump was unapologetic. In a July 2018 interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, he declared the European Union “a foe, what they do to us in trade.” At an Iowa campaign rally that October, he doubled down: “The European Union — sounds so nice, right?… They are brutal… They formed in order to take advantage of us.”

But the biggest rift came in France that November, during the Armistice Day centennial. Macron had spent years courting Trump with flattery and spectacle, but here, everything unraveled. Trump’s decision to skip a ceremony honoring U.S. soldiers killed in World War I sparked global outrage. Then came a verbal war with Macron, who called for a “true European army” to protect against “China, Russia, and even the United States.” Trump fired back on Twitter: “Very insulting… Perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of NATO, which the US subsidizes greatly.”

Then, as Macron addressed world leaders, he seemed to take direct aim at Trump’s America: “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying ‘Our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values.”

Merkel echoed his warning at the Paris Peace Forum: “If isolation wasn’t the solution a hundred years ago, how can it be today, in such an interconnected world?”

Macron later posted a photo of himself and Merkel clasping hands with the caption Unis (“United”). The message to Trump couldn’t have been clearer. Neither could Merkel’s feelings about Trump’s reelection last year: she felt “sorrow” at his comeback and admitted she had “hoped for a different outcome.”

But Merkel is yesterday’s news. Trump is today’s. And tensions between Europe and his White House are far from over. Whether he truly intends to abandon NATO in favor of closer ties with Russia or is simply using his trademark shock-and-awe approach to jolt Europe out of its post-Cold War complacency remains to be seen. “There’s a new sheriff in town,” J.D. Vance declared in Munich. But worse than any new sheriff is an old one returning with scores to settle. High noon may still be a way off for Europe, but it’s certainly time, as they say, to circle the wagons.