In which Trump makes the EU pay $1.35 trillion for the privilege of paying 15% unilateral tariffs on exports & lectures the Eurotards on the stupidity of wind turbines for good measure

Also open thread.

Donald Trump has shown up the European Union. He’s revealed that the world’s largest single market is a paper tiger to be kicked around, with basically no leverage or strength to resist American demands.

All of these supposedly fierce backroom tariff negotiations have yielded an incredibly one-sided deal – really an unparalleled embarrassment. As announced yesterday, the EU promises to invest $600 billion in the U.S. economy and to make $750 billion worth of “strategic purchases” of oil, gas and the like over the next three years. We also promise to buy a bunch of American military equipment. In return for giving the Americans $1.35 trillion, we earn the privilege of a 15% baseline tariff on all of our exports to America and we drop our own tariffs to zero. At least we don’t have to pay the 30% tariffs Trump threatened!

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Trump announced all of this at a press conference at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland. There, Trump spoke from notes he had made on an annotated piece of paper outlining an otherwise unpublished “EU Offer,” as you can see in the mirrored image (courtesy of Welt) below:

This is a cryptic document, but it looks like the EU had offered either a mutual 0% tariff deal to the United States, or a 10% reciprocal tariff deal, and additionally to invest $500 billion in U.S. companies and $600 billion in “energy purchases.” Trump or somebody has revised both of the latter figures upwards (to $600 billion and $750 billion respectively) and added something that looks like “15% across [the board]” in the right margin. This would confirm that the EU got taken to the cleaners.¹

While von der Leyen was trying weakly to put a happy face on her total failure, Trump gave her what we might call a softer Zelensky treatment. He twisted the knife in the wound, calling out the idiocy of EU wind energy in an extended soliloquy that will surely keep the fact-checkers and the regime deboonkers up late for weeks to come. I transcribe his remarks in full, because the whole moment was wonderful:

And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains. And I’m not talking about airplanes. I’m talking about beautiful plains, the beautiful areas in the United States. And you look up and you see windmills all over the place. It’s a horrible thing. It’s the most expensive form of energy. It’s no good.

They’re made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can’t really turn them off. You can’t bury them. They won’t let you bury the propellers, you know, the props, because they’re a certain type of fiber that doesn’t go well with the land. That’s what they say. The environmentalists say you can’t bury them because the fiber doesn’t go well with the land. In other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil.

The whole thing is a con job. It’s very expensive. And in all fairness, Germany tried it and, wind doesn’t work. You need subsidy for wind and energy should not need subsidy. With energy, you make money. You don’t lose money.

But more important than that is it ruins the landscape. It kills the birds. They’re noisy. You know, you have a certain place in the Massachusetts area that over the last 20 years had one or two whales wash ashore and over the last short period of time they had 18, okay, because it’s driving them loco, it’s driving them crazy. Now, windmills will not come, it’s not going to happen in the United States, and it’s a very expensive …

I would love to see, I mean, today I’m playing the best course I think in the world, Turnberry, even though I own it, it’s probably the best course in the world, right? And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills. It’s like right at the end of the 18. I said, “Isn't that a shame? What a shame.” You have the same thing all over, all over Europe in particular. You have windmills all over the place.

Some of the countries prohibit it. But, people ought to know that these windmills are very destructive. They’re environmentally unsound. Just the exact opposite. Because the environmentalists, they’re not really environmentalists, they’re political hacks. These are people that, they almost want to harm the country. But you look at these beautiful landscapes all over all, over the the world. Many countries have gotten smart. They will not allow it. They will not. It's the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy. But, windmills should not be allowed. Okay?

All the while von der Leyen had to sit there, absolutely frozen except for a curiously accelerated rate of blinking, as she learned in real time that weakness and submission do not in fact invite conciliation.

Obviously nobody would take issue with Trump striking the best deal he can for the United States, but from my perspective this deal is a low point for Brussels, who are presently strangling our industry with overregulation and literal deindustrialisation policies, and who cannot even leverage the bundled negotiating power of the 27 EU member states to do anything but promise to send the Americans over a trillion dollars and pay 15% tariffs forever. It feels like Germany could’ve gotten a deal much like this all on its own, without all of the additional bother and expense of the Eurotards.

The EU sucks partly because Europe is not a country and the EU does not have clearly articulated geopolitical interests, and partly because some of its most influential member states have forgotten the very real geopolitical interests that they do have. People like Ursula von der Leyen are stuck in a universalist liberal fantasy that never really existed and that has been openly repudiated for at least a decade now. The answer to everything is not more human rights, more green energy, more third-worldist aid funding and more universalism. Sooner or later we will have to figure out how to survive in a divided world and how to secure resources for our economies. That project is utterly beyond unelected oblivious losers like Ursula von der Leyen, and it is also beyond withered Euro pseudo-statesmen like Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

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I’ve been traveling for a few days. In that time a podcast I recorded with friend-of-the-blog James Kunstler went online. Maybe our conversation would interest some of you:

KunstlerCast 427 — Eugyppius on the Retardation of Europe and "Schoolmarmocracy"

1. The EU offer also apparently included an additional provision that we would accept “U.S. Auto Standards.” Next to this bit, Trump or somebody has written “opening up country.” Who knows what this means. No such agreement has been announced.