EU’s economic ‘window of opportunity’ to lobby Trump

EUROPE has been bracing for the worst from US President Donald Trump in the first few days of his new administration. However, the region may now have an unexpected political “window of opportunity” to influence the new administration’s economic policy as it seeks to strike a potential grand bargain to ward off trade tariffs and wider measures in 2025.

To be sure, there are a huge array of issues that are bedevilling US-EU tensions at the moment. For instance, some media reports this week that Trump wants to withdraw 20,000 troops from Europe which, while not officially confirmed, is very plausible.

It should be remembered that, in July 2020, towards the end of Trump’s first presidential term, he announced that Washington would withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany in response to Berlin’s failure to meet Nato defence spending targets of 2 per cent of GDP. In February 2021, then-president Joe Biden formally suspended this previously planned withdrawal of US troops from Germany.