Top US allies are discussing how to make Americans “feel the pain” after Trump hit their countries with tariffs and threatened to leave NATO. We discuss the conversations they're having in this video collaboration between Politico and Business Insider.
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00:00U.S. President Donald Trump is attacking his closest allies,
00:04threatening to slap them with tariffs.
00:06He's counting on the fact that they need the U.S.
00:10But do they?
00:11And what retaliatory strategies are they already considering?
00:14I'm Eli Stokuls.
00:15I cover the White House and foreign affairs at Politico.
00:18Along with colleagues all across Europe,
00:20we have been covering the possible responses from the world
00:23to a much more aggressive American administration.
00:27Just months ago, no one would have ever been thinking
00:29about how to make the U.S. feel some pain.
00:32It just wasn't on the table, but it is now.
00:34So there's government responses and then there's private sector responses
00:38and public consumer responses.
00:40On the defense side, the biggest question for Europe
00:43is really America's reliability.
00:45He's threatened Europe with essentially walking away from NATO
00:47if countries don't pay more of their GDP toward defense.
00:51So when Donald Trump says spend more on defense, Europe says yes.
00:55But there's also an awareness.
00:57Our reporting says for people in Europe,
00:58they're saying, in the first term, we thought we could appease Donald Trump
01:02by doing deals, sending more money to the United States.
01:05That no longer seems to be the case,
01:07because countries that have done everything that the U.S. wanted
01:11have still drawn Trump's ire.
01:13Poland is by far spending more on defense than any other NATO member.
01:18They are right on Putin's doorstep.
01:20They have continued to buy a ton of defensive equipment, material weapons from the United States.
01:27We're talking around $30 billion a year.
01:30Poland is not in the doghouse.
01:34Happy birthday to you.
01:37May all your dreams come true, Mr. President.
01:40And yet, in Poland, the leaders are rethinking how much they can rely on the United States.
01:47Our reporter in Poland noticed that for the first time that they could ever remember,
01:51there were posters across Warsaw linking Putin and Trump sort of culturally and publicly
01:57to be suddenly seeing signs of anti-American sentiment in Poland,
02:02a place that has been as pro-American as any country in Europe.
02:05That is a sign that even though the government is not in a position to jeopardize its relationship
02:11with the United States, that public opinion, if it's changing in Poland,
02:13it's changing fast all across Europe.
02:15And I think that is largely in response to the way Trump has tried to use American weapons system
02:21as leverage over Ukraine.
02:23And there were questions in Poland and in other places across Europe
02:27about whether it makes sense to continue buying F-35s.
02:30If they get mad at us, can they deny us the equipment that we need to repair
02:35these planes? Can they deny us the technological updates that we need to keep flying these planes?
02:40Europe does have other options. France builds fighter jets.
02:44There's also an anti-missile defense system that the Europeans have made.
02:49That is now being seen as a replacement for Patriot missile defense systems.
02:54The procurement time can vary. The delivery time can vary.
02:58But Europe is also trying to build these things faster to lessen the reliability on Washington.
03:04Ultimately, it will be harder for the U.S. to get the Europeans to do the things that
03:09American governments want them to do, whether that's helping contain China economically,
03:13whether that's responding, you know, militarily, joining an alliance in the event
03:17of an actual hot war somewhere, perhaps in Taiwan or some other part of Eastern Europe.
03:24For the entirety of American history, we have depended on allies.
03:28NATO is an organization that was formed after World War II. And the central article in the
03:34charter, Article 5, dictates that an attack on one country is an attack on all. And so with Europe
03:41and the United States being aligned, there's been peace for eight decades because nobody has wanted to
03:48test Article 5, with the exception of 9-11. And NATO allies responded and fought alongside the United States.
03:57The other reason that alliances are important, when the U.S. military decides that it needs to
04:02carry out an operation, say, in the Middle East, a lot of those troops, the people who are actually
04:07flying the planes, dropping the bombs, manning the drones, those people are based out of Europe.
04:13They're based in other countries, other parts of the world. And those forward operating bases allow
04:18a faster response. And so having countries willing to have an American military presence on the ground
04:24helps not just American security but global security. If the defense relationship deteriorates and
04:29Europe decides that they can't rely on America to defend them if they're attacked, then that also
04:34impacts the economic relationship. Technology is another area where Europe has realized sort of an
04:41over-reliance on American technology, American companies. The EU has passed a lot of digital services
04:47regulations trying to rein in some of these companies. And if American companies like X, for example,
04:53are not willing to abide by the EU's laws, they could see themselves banned. The Dutch, they've approved
04:58funding to build a lot of tech infrastructure that is Dutch. There are always concerns about the
05:03sensitivity or security of data wherever it goes. But I think there's new concerns because that data
05:09is in the hands of American companies. Beyond what governments are doing, we're seeing anti-U.S.
05:15sentiment across Europe and Canada and other parts of the world rise in pretty stunning ways. There is
05:22real frustration with a lot of the titans of American tech aligning themselves so closely with
05:28this administration, this president. And so do consumers decide that I don't really need my X account
05:33or my Meta account anymore? I don't really need to buy this on Amazon. I can find it somewhere else.
05:38Suddenly you have people just no longer wanting to buy American products. Things like Florida
05:44orange juice or bourbon from Kentucky. Things specifically American and from Republican or
05:49red states in particular. There's far fewer sales of Teslas happening across Europe. There's also an
05:55impact potentially on tourism. A lot of Europeans like traveling to the United States, especially in
06:00the summer months. It's not just the tariffs, but it's also concerns about visas and immigration. And
06:06is the United States going to allow certain people in? Are they going to hassle you at the border?
06:10All of these things have a negative effect on tourism and on commerce, really, because these are
06:16hurting the economic relationship on both sides of the Atlantic. So Europe is considering ways to
06:23make the American public feel the pain if this trade war continues. Export tariffs are something that
06:29the EU has discussed. It's kind of middle ground between the initial round of counter tariffs and
06:36going nuclear, so to speak, with the anti-coercion instrument that the EU established in 2023.
06:42It would basically start a long process that sets out how Europe would retaliate to tariffs. It starts
06:49by establishing a such a mechanism for conversations. It can go up to counter tariffs. It can take away
06:55intellectual property protections for American products in Europe, all kinds of things that are
07:00aimed at forcing the US to stand down in a trade war. It was conceived to protect against economic
07:08coercion by China, but it struck us as just remarkable that in European capitals people were even talking
07:15about this as something that could be deployed against the US. One thing that has really unnerved allies is
07:20the imperialist ambitions that Trump has expressed. Talking about Greenland and annexing Canada.
07:30Canada has a huge trading relationship with the United States. Oil, number one importer of crude oil,
07:35coming from Alberta to the United States. Cars, automobiles, there's a piece manufactured in this
07:40country, a piece manufactured in that country, put together in the United States. There's also Canadian
07:45timber. American construction industry gets a ton of lumber from Canada. If the trade war continues,
07:52house construction is going to get much, much more expensive, and that is going to have a big impact.
07:58There are a number of northern states in the Great Lakes region and in New England that rely heavily
08:03on energy from Canada powering their grid. And the Canadian government has talked about shutting off the
08:09electricity. And so that is a really punitive measure that Canadians would probably never have been
08:15considering until you have an American president imposing high tariffs and talking about annexation.
08:20Foreign policy observers are definitely noticing that, you know, in the aggregate,
08:26alienating allies runs the risk of putting it on a platter for China to make inroads with long-time
08:33US allies. And so we've seen the leader of Spain travel to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping, and we may see
08:39more of that. At some point, if America forces Europe to choose and makes the relationship with
08:46Washington sort of prohibitive, then that is a natural place for those countries to go.
08:51The future is really in more doubt than ever. I think people see in Trump 2.0 a person who is even
08:59more willing to actually push the button. And we've seen the entire world economy convulse as a result of
09:06Trump's zigging and zagging on trade. Allies realize there is a long way to go and they're really bracing
09:13for more shocks.