US President Donald Trump has deliberately “broken up“ the European Union in order to reach a trade deal that is beneficial to Washington. This opinion was expressed by the former US permanent representative to the EU Anthony Gardner in an interview with the European publication Politico.
According to him, Trump, “who hates the EU“ and considers it a “disjointed, weak, slow and cumbersome organization“, deliberately decided to divide the positions of European countries on the issue of trade relations with the US and “achieved his goal“. Gardner noted that the results of the negotiations have shown the West's geopolitical rivals, including China, that the tactic of putting pressure on Europe is working. “This shows that a more effective way to extract concessions from the EU in negotiations is to threaten and ruthlessly use leverage to divide the EU,“ he said.
The American diplomat said that Brussels' negotiating position is inconsistent and sounds extremely weak. He believes that Europe has failed to take advantage of its powerful trade opportunities. “We all know that the EU is not a superpower in anything other than trade. But they underestimated that too. “Donald Trump never believed they could use the mechanism to counter pressure,“ Gardner said.
On July 27, EC President Ursula von der Leyen and Trump agreed that Washington would impose 15% tariffs on about 75% of European goods imported into the United States from August 1, instead of the 30% tariffs on all imports from Europe that the White House had threatened. In return, the EC promised to completely ban all imports of Russian energy resources into the EU and to purchase US$750 billion in US oil, gas, nuclear equipment and fuel, as well as invest US$600 billion in the US economy.