Guest post by Drieu Godefridi
Faced with the American “tariffs,” Europe has two options.
The first is to export less. This is the retaliation strategy. Responding to US tariffs with new European tariffs. This strategy will automatically lead to a drop in imports from the United States, and a drop in exports to the United States. So everyone loses, starting with European consumers.
Well, all losers, but especially Europeans.
Europe exports more to the USA than the other way round. Europe, therefore, has more to lose from a tariff war with the USA than vice versa. And let’s be careful.
On four fronts – economic, financial, budgetary and military – Europe is in a position of weakness the likes of which it has not experienced since 1945. At this stage, any mistake could precipitate our downfall. In this respect, it should be noted that if Europe takes refuge as usual in a verbose wait-and-see attitude – i.e. delays negotiating with the Americans, piling on fruitless summits between Europeans – the result will be the same: a drastic fall in European exports. Because the new (basic) American tariffs come into force immediately. The clock is ticking.
The second option is to import more goods and products made in the USA. The US government wants to balance its trade with Europe, which means opening up European markets. This means lowering our tariff barriers, especially the insurmountable European barriers equivalent to customs duties.
European tariffs against the USA are not very high. But the EU is a formidable machine, constantly churning out standards in every field. Any American product that does not meet each of these standards is de facto banned from the European market. This applies to just about every product made in the USA. “But, sir, of course there are standards! We don’t want chlorinated Yankee chicken on our plates”, goes the familiar refrain. Which is a bit simplistic, and we’re not forcing anyone to eat it.
But if, for every American product, the EU brandishes a standard that prohibits its entry into Europe, under various pretexts, then we will necessarily be heading towards option 1, a tariff war that will lead to the massive impoverishment of Europe.
The truth is that the American tariffs are an opportunity. Not to strengthen the EU, as the pro-Europeans claim, because the EU is a leaden blanket that poisons everything it touches: just think of energy! The war in Ukraine! Freedom of expression!
No, the opportunity to take the American government at its word.
By proposing the creation of an Atlantic free trade area, based for example on the recognition in principle of the equivalence of health, environmental and other standards in all aspects of transatlantic trade. In this way, European consumers would have access to all American products, and Americans would have access to all European products.
In truth, Europe has no choice, because Europe is weak, and its defence has been funded for half a century by the American taxpayer. It will remain so for another five to ten years, because armies don’t spring up like daffodils in March.
The negotiation of such an agreement, whose scope would be telluric and civilizational – on the model of the agreement between Argentina and the USA, for example – requires a new generation of European leaders.
The stuffed, smug creatures of the von der Leyen and Lagarde type have demonstrated their incompetence tinged with deadly ideology. Let’s hand the arena over to figures of a different calibre, like Giorgia Meloni, inspired souls with a grand vision and an impeccably coherent world vision, who cherish and grasp the profound essence of Europe, while cultivating an enlightened and unprejudiced friendship with our brothers in America.
Stock markets are plummeting, and in Europe the paleopress is spitting out its hatred of Trump. That notwithstanding, Europe’s future, if it is to be prosperous and secure, lies in deepening the transatlantic partnership.
Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).
You can follow Drieu on X.
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