Trump’s plan for Europe is falling apart

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Europe matters to Maga. The Trump administration’s national security strategy asserted that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States”. But it also fretted that the European continent is on a path to “civilizational erasure” — citing mass migration, “suppression of political opposition” and falling birth rates.

So what is to be done? The NSS proposed that the US should intervene by “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. The key strategy was to ally with “patriotic European parties”.

Roughly seven months have passed since the publication of this remarkable document. But the Maga agenda for Europe is already falling apart. European parties and politicians that Donald Trump’s people regard as “patriotic” are losing power or rapidly distancing themselves from the US president.

The biggest blow was the defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary in April. But Trump has also alienated potential allies in Italy, Germany, France and Britain.

The loss of Orbán — a Maga hero and regular speaker at the Trump-aligned CPAC conference — was a particular blow. The former Hungarian prime minister was not just an ideological soul mate, he was also a useful Trump ally, often blocking collective European action on issues such as aid to Ukraine.

The Trump administration had accused European governments of “subversion of democratic processes”. But it did not hesitate to intervene on behalf of Orbán, a champion of “illiberal democracy” — who completely excluded his rival, Péter Magyar, from TV coverage. JD Vance even travelled to Budapest to support Orbán during the campaign. To no avail: Magyar won.

The Hungarian election illustrated that the EU has much more to offer its member states than the US. Orbán’s various violations of European law had led to severe restrictions on the flow of EU funds to Hungary — damaging the economy. The prospect of a restoration of European funds offered a direct material incentive to Hungarian voters that the White House could never match.

Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, was also seen as ideologically close to the Trump White House. Vance wrote a preface to her recent book. But Meloni also knows that her country is a massive beneficiary of the EU’s post-Covid reconstruction aid — receiving almost €200bn in grants and loans.

Trump’s resentment at Italy’s reluctance to help the US in its war with Iran led him to talk about Meloni in highly insulting terms. She has fired back. Long experience in America may suggest to Trump that he can insult and demean political opponents — such as Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz — and they will come crawling back. But that pattern is unlikely to repeat itself with a political leader who answers to Italian voters not Maga Republicans.

The antics of Trump and his supporters may have lost much of their shock value in the US. But they still have the capacity to provoke strong reactions in Europe — forcing even potential allies to distance themselves from the US president. Jordan Bardella, one of the two dominant figures in France’s Rassemblement National, refused to speak at the CPAC conference last year after Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide, gave what looked like a Hitler salute on the stage.

When Trump denigrated the contribution of allied and British troops to the war in Afghanistan, his pal Nigel Farage was forced to disagree in public. A poll this year found that just 14 per cent of British people had a favourable view of Trump — and 81 per cent had an unfavourable view. A close association is likely to be an electoral millstone for Farage and his Reform UK party.

The US president is even more unpopular in Germany, where only 10 per cent have a favourable view of Trump. This presents something of a dilemma for the Alternative for Germany party, which Vance and others have cultivated. The AfD are ahead in the polls — but its leadership is now distancing itself from the Trump administration. The German voting system also means the AfD is still unlikely to be able to secure a formal role in the national government — dashing the White House’s hopes of pulling the country over to its side.

The Trump administration had high hopes that Călin Georgescu, a populist, far-right candidate, would win the presidential election in Romania in 2025. Vance was outraged when the election was annulled, after accusations of Russian interference in the campaign. Georgescu was banned from running and the candidate most aligned with him later lost to a pro-EU candidate. As a result, the most Maga-aligned president in Europe may now be Poland’s Karol Nawrocki. But his influence on Poland’s domestic affairs is limited by the constitution — and Polish leaders will have little time for the White House’s indulgence of Russia.

By contrast, Maga is having much more success finding ideological partners in Latin America. After the recent presidential election in Colombia, it now has a Trump-aligned leader, as do Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and El Salvador. For now Mexico and Brazil, the two most populous countries in the region, have resisted the trend.

Rampant crime, poverty and weak institutions make Latin America susceptible to Trumpism. But in the more prosperous and established democracies of Europe, the Maga message is falling flat.

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