How the US began dismantling the system it created and what the EU should do

Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has slashed foreign aid and weaponized the United States’ economic power to bully long-standing allies

In a matter of months, both the international role and global standing of the United States have undergone a profound transformation.

The country once described by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as the "indispensable nation" upholding the rules-based multilateral order has rapidly mutated into an extractive superpower.

Read more about how US foreign policy has changed under President Donald Trump and what the European Union should do in response in the article by European institute researchers Moreno Bertoldi and Marco Buti - Predatory America: how Donald Trump is changing US foreign policy and what allies should do now.

The principle driving his agenda was best articulated by the seventeenth-century French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine: "The argument of the strongest is always the best."

To justify its policies, Trump’s administration has weaponized deep-rooted resentments, chief among them the belief that the US has been exploited by other countries for decades and must now correct these perceived injustices. 

Alarmingly, very few world leaders seem to grasp the full extent of the shift in US foreign policy– or are in denial about it. Many, including most European leaders, cling to the illusion that mutually beneficial agreements are still possible.

But Trump’s recent actions have made it abundantly clear that the old rules no longer apply.

An extractive superpower, after all, does not "waste" resources helping other countries simply to win goodwill. Other countries, particularly poorer ones, will bear the brunt of the costs.

To be sure, Trump is not wrong to argue that America’s allies must spend more – and better – on defense and reduce their military dependence on the US.

However, as a condition for reaffirming its commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty (which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all), the US has effectively imposed an arbitrary defense-spending target of 5% of GDP on its allies, without undertaking any in-depth assessment of their actual security needs.

Following June’s NATO summit, a massive transfer of resources from Europe to the US is now underway, and the same goes for America’s allies in Asia.

When it comes to trade, Trump’s strategy since his first presidential campaign has been to force America’s economic partners into submission.For Trump, trade negotiations are zero-sum, with a clear winner (the US) and a clear loser (everyone else).

The idea of mutually beneficial agreements seems entirely alien to him.

America’s transformation into an extractive superpower is bound to inflict significant economic damage without delivering lasting benefits to the US. 

Whatever short-term gains come from resource extraction will likely be outweighed by its costs: slower growth driven by policy uncertainty, tariff-fueled inflation, widening macroeconomic imbalances, and the inefficient allocation of resources – an inherent feature of the extractive model Trump promotes.

The European Union, ideally in coordination with other major democracies, has both the opportunity and the responsibility to develop an alternative, non-extractive model of multilateralism. This effort should start with two key steps.

First, the dismantling of USAID has created a $60 billion funding gap.

Team Europe – a humanitarian and development aid initiative made up of EU institutions and individual member states – should begin filling that gap by reallocating a portion of its roughly €90 billion ($105 billion) budget. This should be paired with stronger support for clean-energy projects in the world’s poorest countries.

Second, the EU should deepen its economic and political ties with like-minded developed economies and emerging markets to reduce its dependence on the US.

For more details, see the article by Moreno Bertoldi and Marco Buti, originally published on Project Syndicate and republished with permission – Predatory America: how Donald Trump is changing US foreign policy and what allies should do now.