Analysis | If the next question is well formulated is a sign that the European muscle is soft: is Trump strong with the weak (Europe) and weak with the strong (Putin, XI)? What happened this weekend with the trade agreement validates the assumptions of the question – but the answer to them. However: Trump has two other problems to solve after exploring the alleged European weaknesses. And the way you will deal with these two dossiers will allow you to conclude whether it is willing to face the most relentless leaders in the same way that faces the seemingly less relentless European leaders
Gaza and Ukraine will show if Trump is a true leader or just a “bully”
Analysis of Stephen CollinsonCNN
Donald Trump looked like the last king of Scotland.
At the sound of the bags of bellows, the president welcomed Keir Stmerer in one of his Scottish golf palaces. The British Prime Minister flew on Monday as a guest and pleading for a corner of his own United Kingdom.
Starmer was a mere extra while Trump presided over a hallucinating press conference that addressed topics such as his hatred for wind energy, the windows of his ballroom windows and Windsor castle.
Trump ended his protocol reversal day transporting the prime minister through Scotland at Air Force One to another of his exclusive clubs, in another ostensive demonstration of power of the US.
A day earlier, the EU’s highest official, Ursula Von Der Leyen, equaled Stmerer’s effusivity after reaching Trunberry Tryberry fields for an audience that included a trade agreement that some Europeans considered a surrender.
Events in the new temporary capital of America, in southwestern Scotland, were a practical lesson on how Trump flexes his indomitable personality and his relentless meaning from the weaknesses of others to impose his personal power and accumulate great victories for himself.
Six months after the beginning of his second presidency, Trump is getting exactly what he wants on several fronts. It is destroying the global free trade system by aligning trade agreements that consecrate one of its longstanding obsessions – tariffs. He sent US stealthy bombers around the world to bombard the Iran’s nuclear program. And managed to pull promises from a vast increase in military spending from NATO members.
At home is the same. Trump subjugated Congress. It is imposing its ideology on large universities. He forced private law firms to work for him and is using the justice system as a weapon against his enemies. And he effectively closed the southern border and waged migration in an illegal situation.
This is the kind of “victory” that deluded him in his first term and which he promised his supporters Maga – and the victories would reach such a volume that they would get tired of winning.
However, Trump is such a polarizing president – whose “victories” are sometimes more theater than substance – that his current sequence deserves an attentive exam.
In the international level, it is fair to ask: Are you Trump to accumulate victories for the American people or to themselves? Is your coercive power over smaller allies and states a sign of strength or the behavior of a recreational bully? And what will be the consequence of your long -term victories – years after your enthusiasm for a headline proclaiming a great “agreement”? The alliances that made the US a superpower seem especially vulnerable in this regard.
True global tests of Trump’s power
If Trump is really a dominant global force, the proof will come from his management of three critical issues highlighted in his trip to Scotland: an excruciating hunger in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and commerce.
Trump made amazing Tom changes on Monday about Gaza and Ukraine.
In response to a horrible video of malnourished children in Gaza, Trump contradicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that there is no hunger at the enclave after months of Israeli bombing.
“We have to feed children,” Trump said, promising to create food distribution centers to relieve growing hunger. But it offered few details about how this would work in a war zone where civilians were killed while waiting for food. He also ignored US complicity in the aid crisis, after the difficulties faced by an Israeli program supported by Washington that ignored the UN experts.
Perhaps Trump’s commitment is a genuine change and may lead him to Minar Netanyahu, a leader who repeatedly rejected US pressure and has damaged the president’s desire to be seen as a peacemaker.
It may be that, as happened after the chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2017, Trump was truly moved by desolate images of children to suffer.
But a president with a sharp political sense may also have calculated that the growing indignation of Israel would mean that he could eventually share his guilt for horror. The cynical argument is corroborated by his previous suggestion that the inhabitants of Gaza should go out to allow the creation of a “Riviera East” beach resort. And the destruction of USAID by Trump means that the children of Gaza who die will be far from alone.
Will Trump follow his rebukes to Putin?
Trump’s second test of global power will come from Ukraine.
The president vented on Monday the growing frustration with the refusal of Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept the generous suggestions for a peace agreement in Ukraine, shortening his previous deadline: the 50 days for ceasefire passed 10 or 12.
“We have such pleasant conversations, such respectful and pleasant conversations. And then people die the next night,” Trump said.
If Trump really passes Putin to punish him, he could harm Russia, especially with secondary sanctions that finance the war, aiming at Moscow’s oil exports. But there is a big problem: this would require the US to directly face powers like India and China, risking a global economic setback.
While Trump was in Scotland, his trade negotiators were in Sweden to hold high -level conversations with China that could produce another “victory” for the tariff strategy and potentially the show of a presidential visit to Beijing this year.
So: Trump is really ready to risk all this through Ukraine – a nation he thinks has already had too much help from the US?
A robust action against Putin in the coming days that he may also have repercussions against Xi – even against Trump’s political interests – would show that the president is willing not only to master Europeans but also to face the most relentless leaders
Not to take such action would validate critics who see Trump’s irritation with Putin less for the situation of Ukraine than for the embarrassment of the president’s Nobel Prize for the president to have been frustrated by his former hero.
Trump’s commercial victory in the EU may be smaller than it seems
At first glance, Trump has achieved a real victory against the European Union in the trade agreement and for its “America First” trade policies, which he sees as the reversal of decades of partners who took advantage of the United States.
The EU chose not to use its own economic power to inflict damage to the US economy. Instead, he accepted an agreement that provides for the imposition of a 15% rate on European exports.
The reaction was immediate.
“An alliance of free peoples, gathered to affirm their values and defend their interests, decides to submit,” wrote French Prime Minister François Bayrou, in X.
But others have seen pragmatism instead of capitulation, because it is clear that tariffs are existential to Trump-as similar rates included in recent commercial agreements announced with Japan and the Philippines. The already slow economic growth in Europe will be affected. But a trade war would be worse.
“Those who await a hurricane thank a storm,” said Wolfgang Große ENTRUP, head of the German Chemical Industry Association.
Trump’s estimate that the EU agreement was “the biggest agreement ever” is a hyperbole. The brief picture is far from being a detailed agreement that may lead years to negotiate and thousands of pages for writing.
All of this seems to Trump’s classic habit of turning a short advance into a gigantic victory.
The White House announcement is scarce and full of conditional language. In a closer inspection, it is unclear what the EU gave in exactly. There is no clear indication that Europeans have given up US requirements to accept their hormone -treated meat or to facilitate the regulation of Silicon Valley companies.
European leaders are playing in the long run.
A Trump trade war could have destroyed his efforts to prevent him from breaking the transatlantic alliance, which included a commitment for NATO members to increase defending spending to 5% by 2035 during his last transatlantic trip.
It may not be a coincidence that Trump’s change of course over Ukraine and Gaza – which brought him closer to two crucial priorities of European foreign policy – occurred hours after EU concessions in the trade agreement.
Trump’s victories are open. Europeans are more subtle.
Strmer is following the same game plan. His desire to put political dignity aside each time he meets Trump earned him a friendship with the president-and a 10%tariff rate, better than that imposed on the EU.
As Trump’s search for victories can drain US power
Trump’s binary view of a life in search of victories means that he should always go over and those on the other side must lose.
Eventually, this will eventually alienate some of America’s best friends.
This does not matter in the “America First” creed, which seeks to leverage US power against smaller nations, whether allied or opposing.
But US alliances and their leadership of democracies with similar ideas have been the key to Washington’s power since the end of World War II. And sometimes the country needs its friends – as after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Trump is burning the American power to a frightening pace.
And while some of America’s traditional allies consider the narrow ties with China, there are clear signs that Trump’s transactional approach could cause long -term damage.
In the latest edition of “Foreign Affairs”, Kori Schake, the former Bush Administration Foreign Policy employee, writes that Trump’s team is accelerating a future in which countries “choose to leave the existing international order led by the US or build a new one that would be antagonistic to US interests.”
And it is not even clear that many of Trump’s victories will bring greater security at home. After all, by punishing Europe with a 15% rate on its products, Trump imposed another consumption tax on Americans.
“It’s a number that will hurt both US and EU economies,” Fredrik Persson, president of BusinessSurope, Richard Quest of CNN, told CNN.
