America says "Jump", Europe says "How high?": Evaluating the current relationship between the USA and Europe

Emira Shpati is an undergraduate student studying Politics, Sociology and East European studies, at UCL.

For the several past decades, The USA established itself as a liberal and influential, western powerhouse and an ally to Europe. Yet, Trump’s return to power for his second term as President, has seen America become both a role-model for many far right-wing movements, whilst simultaneously becoming more isolated from its European allies, due to Trump’s hostile tariffs. This article aims to explore how Trump and his administration have shaped America’s influence and relationship with Europe.

The past of American and European relations

The 20th century saw the USA step up to defend and later on help transition Europe into a peaceful and united region during the post-war period, creating a tight and interdependent bond between the two, forming what was considered the “Western bloc“ (Anderson&Steinberg,2025,p.885). After the cold-war, America’s reach extended to eastern Europe, with the US, alongside NATO, intervening in Ex-Yugoslavian conflicts, acting as a peacekeeper in Bosnia (Lundestad,2003,p.250) and helping stop Serbian Forces from ethnically cleansing Albanians in Kosovo (Lundestad,2003,p.253). The manner of intervention sparked a debate on whether it had violated international law, which created a drift in the eastern region of Europe on their rapport with the USA (1999,United Nations). Overall, the USA was celebrated as a western powerhouse and a key ally of Europe across the 20th century, up until the early 21st century.

The influence of the MAGA movement on Europe

Whilst the 20th century saw America become a liberal peacekeeper and ally of Europe, since then there has been a drastic shift in how the US administration portrays itself. Both of Trump’s terms have been defined by the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, which as suggested by its name, is based in the nostalgia of a vague, idolised past of American “Greatness“ (Japaridze, 2025). Which era that specifically is, is never concisely agreed upon, but some understand it as a distorted view of a past associated with national economic abundance, at the expense of minorities’ rights . Both of Trump’s campaigns have capitalised on Americans’ insecurity towards both the domestic state of affairs, such as the economy, as well as the supposed decline of America as a western superpower. This rhetoric seems to have been adopted by several hard-right parties, that have risen across Europe, such as the AfD in Germany, France’s National Rally party and the Reform UK Party, whose leader, Nigel Farage, has worked for Trump since 2016 (Smith,2025). Trump’s allies have also directly been involved in trying to promote a MAGA-esque movement in Europe. For the past couple of years, allies of Trump have been touring Europe in a bid to mentor far-right politicians into winning elections (Schultheis et al,2025). What is even more shocking, is that the Heritage Foundation, the American think-tank credited for drafting up the alleged Trump manifesto, ‘Project 2025’, are suspected to be plotting with far-right European politicians on how to dismantle the EU (Munárriz,2025). In cooperation with Polish and Hungarian think tanks, the Heritage Foundation organised a conference where the idea of a “Great [European] Reset“ was discussed, which considered a future where the EU was either dismantled or shut down and replaced with a new model (Munárriz,2025).

However, ‘MAGA’s’ influence over Europe isn’t as powerful as we might think. Many European politicians that aligned themselves with the MAGA movement, were not successful in their latest elections. This could be seen in the elections in Romania, Albania and Poland which have occurred in the past couple of years (Schultheis et al,2025). On top of that, it has been argued that Trump has in fact made it more difficult for there to be a strong relationship between the US and Europe, due to him imposing new, hostile tariffs.

The impact of Trump’s Tariffs

A few months into his second term as President, Trump shocked the global order by announcing a set of higher tariffs to affect 180 US trading-partners, which established a particular hostility between USA and Europe, (King, 2025). Europe’s dependence on US markets has allowed for the US to have the upper-hand, establishing “unbalanced deals“ which aim to benefit the US in the long run (Corlin,2025). This has been interpreted as an attempt by Trump to reassert America’s dominance of the global arena, especially in relation to Europe due to their shared past. The Trump administration even flirted with using trade deals as a way to spread their own agenda. During early trade negotiations between the USA and UK, Vice President, JD Vance, allegedly demanded the UK government scrap laws which protected the LGBT+ community from Hatespeech, in exchange for a better trade deal (Independent, 2025). Though the UK did not agree to this offer, the alleged confidence of the US administration to propose such an offer, revealed how strained the relationship between European countries and the US has become under the Trump presidency, that the USA might become a threat to European states’ sovereignty due to their unbalanced relationship with the US.

Though there’s many factors to consider alongside the imposed tariffs, a survey conducted by YouGov (2025) has made one thing clear: the general European public’s perception of Trump and the USA is currently majorly negative and continuing to plummet since Trump’s first term, especially in Western Europe. Considering this, it is clear that whilst Trump may have inspired particular groups in Europe, it is not a general reflection of the wider European demographic.

USA’s relationship with Europe during Russia’s war on Ukraine

Whilst the previous president, Joe Biden, expressed his unwavering support towards Ukraine till the end of his term (Gedeon, 2025), Trump on the other hand has abstained from taking a clear side, in an attempt to stand as a peacekeeper between Russia and Ukraine (Yang,2025). This has become a problem for western Europe, which has mainly relied on its allyship with the USA to resource and protect Ukraine from Russian aggression, as without it, many believe there’s little chance of saving the entirety of Ukraine (Walker, 2025). Relationship strains escalated when Trump expressed annoyance towards Ukraine’s requests for USA support, commenting on how both Ukraine and Russia share the blame for creating a war, which was later followed up by Washington joining Moscow in voting against a UN resolution that identified Russia as “the aggressor” against Ukraine (Tian & Aikman, 2025). The rest of the past year saw several west European leaders gather to support Ukrainian president Zelensky, in negotiations with the USA, leading to ongoing back-and-forth talks, in attempts to convince Trump to provide support and eventually help achieve peace (Garrett & Keith, 2025). Amidst negotiations, in an interview Trump took a jab at Europe by calling it a “decaying“ group of nations, referring to its leaders as “weak“ people, who could not control their own continent (Burns, 2025).

As Trump’s dissatisfaction with Europe grows, there are rising concerns that a rift between Europe and the US could create the opportunity for further Russian aggression into the continent, beyond just Ukraine (Comerford,2025).

The Future

The US has already started 2026 by striking Venezuela and capturing the Venezuelan president, Maduro. The nations historically in opposition to the US, such as Russia and China, condemned the American intervention for the use of force against what they considered a sovereign country (Keenan,2026). Whilst the event was met with slight concern from European leaders, who questioned if the intervention had broken international law or not, most still agreed on the necessity to remove any illegitimate authority from Venezuela (Keenan, 2026).

Trump has managed to drastically change the rapport between the USA and Europe, within the span of a year. Whilst he and his administration have found allies in like-minded groups across Europe, the general European public does not seem to have a positive perception of Trump’s America. Though the relationship between the two has strained, European states as well as those in the EU are still willing to keep Trump on their side, through active negotiations to save their relationship.

Whether 2026 will welcome a tighter relationship between the US and Europe, will depend on whether Trump can put aside his differences with the rest of the west and discover the benefits of working together as they have historically done.

Works Cited

1. Anderson, J. and Steinberg, F. (2025) ‘The unbalanced transatlantic relationship: understanding US influence in Europe’, Journal of European Integration, 47(6), pp. 885–903. doi: 10.1080/07036337.2025.2537377.

2. Britton, H. (2025), ‘European Favourability of the USA falls following the return of Donald Trump’, You Gov, https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/51719-european-favourability-of-the-usa-falls-following-the-return-of-donald-trump

3. Burns, A. (2025), ‘Trump thrashes European leaders in wide-ranging interview:’I think they’re weak’, Politico, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/09/trump-dasha-burns-interview-europe-immigration-ukraine-00682016?utm_campaign=Trump+thrashes+European+leaders+in+interview:+‘I+think+they’re+weak’&utm_medium=alert&utm_source=email

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