The Transatlantic MAGA Fantasy |
President Donald Trump, who distrusted the transatlantic relationship in his first term, has tried to refashion it in his second. He has exerted extreme pressure on European countries, most conspicuously by threatening to annex Greenland, a territory of Denmark, by force. He has enacted economic policies that disadvantage Europe through his extensive and shifting tariffs. And his administration has interfered in the continent’s domestic politics, criticizing both the European Union and mainstream European parties while promising friendship with Europe’s far-right parties.
An adversarial relationship with Europe may suit the MAGA movement. Trump officials regularly claim that Europe’s core problems are immigration, a loss of national sovereignty to the European Union, and an insufficiently conservative public sphere. This has been most clearly articulated by Vice President JD Vance. “In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” Vance argued at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, portraying “mass migration” as Europe’s most urgent challenge. After more than a year of trying, the Trump administration has not come close to assembling a coalition of far-right parties in Europe. Nor has it leveraged relationships with such parties to advance U.S. interests in Europe. Even for ideologically aligned far-right parties, Trump’s arbitrary tariffs, verbal attacks, and territorial threats are difficult to stomach. Most ultranationalist parties in Europe also harbor legacies of anti-Americanism, and as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s defeat in Hungary has demonstrated, support from the Trump administration is increasingly a liability for Europe’s far right.
The United States’ war in Iran, which began in February, has illuminated two truths about the contemporary transatlantic relationship. One is that European far-right parties have not been Trump’s wartime allies in Europe. They have rushed to distance themselves from the war, showing that ideological alignment does not automatically translate into political loyalty. The other truth is that the administration’s open support for right-wing European parties and candidates has damaged Washington’s relationship with European leaders who are not on the far right. Had Washington cared more about respecting and preserving these relationships, many European leaders might have offered symbolic support for the Iran war or at least toned down their public criticism. Yet distrust of Washington now prevails across Europe.
The United States would be wise to rethink its approach to Europe, especially in view of Hungary's election results. Instead of continuing to fan the flames, the Trump administration should step back from Europe’s domestic politics, end its illiberal crusade, and deal judiciously with European leaders across the political spectrum. Such a reversal is not in this administration’s nature. But with the costs of the Iran war growing, it is in the United States’ interest to seek points of cooperation with Europe as a whole.
Since its inception in the late 1940s, the........