It’s one week until Election Day in the US, and leaders across the EU are making preparations for a potential second Donald Trump presidency.
Politico reports that EU figures are predicting “abrupt changes on US policy even before the inauguration,” should the Republican candidate win.
Among the concerns are Trump’s possible approach to tariffs on imports of EU goods and wavering support for Ukraine.
‘Mini China’
Trump last week criticised the EU over its trading relationship with the US, describing it as a “mini China”.
“They don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products, don't take anything. You have a US$312bn deficit with the EU. You know, the EU is a mini – but not so mini – is a mini China.”
The former president has promised a flat 10% tariff on all imports to the US, rising to 60% for goods from China.
‘Trump task force’
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff, Björn Seibert, has been meeting with ambassadors from the EU’s 27 member nations ahead of the US election to discuss the bloc’s approach to issues including trade and energy policy.
The bloc is also reported to have established a ‘Trump task force’ to develop a response to a potential Trump administration’s policies.
One senior diplomat, speaking anonymously to the FT, said:
“Everyone is taking everything much more seriously. We are trying to make sure we will not be taken by surprise.”
Another diplomat said that they expected a Trump win to mean the EU “will be in trouble. Deep trouble.”
“This disruptive element will be huge, and the unpredictability will be huge.”
Retaliation plans
Officials speaking to the publication suggested that Trump’s tariff plans could cost the EU as much as €150bn a year in exports to the US.
Earlier this year, the EU developed a two-step draft plan for its approach to a Trump administration on trade, which includes a list of US imports that it could target with tariffs of as much as 50%.
The then-EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, said:
“We believe the US and EU are strategic allies and especially in the current geopolitical context, it’s important that we work together on trade.”
Special relationship?
The UK government is making its own preparations for the result of the election, with prime minister Sir Keir Starmer taking time out to dine with Trump last month in a bid to ensure a strong relationship with the former president.
That came prior to a recent dispute between Labour and the Republican Party over Labour members volunteering for the Harris campaign.
Starmer told the BBC that “we both wanted to ensure we have a good relationship”, adding:
“It's up to me as prime minister to make sure I have a good relationship with whoever the president is.
“I believe strongly in personal relations. Have the ability to, as necessary, pick up the phone to them to sort out issues or talk about issues. So it was a good dinner and I'm really glad that we managed to do it.”
BBC political editor Chris Mason suggests that, while a Trump administration is likely to pursue a more protectionist policy overall, it may also be more open to striking a free trade agreement (FTA) with the UK, though its asks in return may be too great for the Labour government to accept.
Starmer has yet to meet with Harris, which her campaign has said is a result of her busy schedule.
The view from China
The EU isn’t the only region preparing for changes following Election Day. As reported by DW, China is preparing for both a Kamala Harris and a second Donald Trump presidency.
Diao Daming, of Renmin University in Beijing, told the publication that it is likely that neither candidate is likely to “bring significant benefits to China”.
Harris has promised to ensure “America, not China, wins the competition for the twenty-first century”, and Diao argues that “how she'll handle foreign affairs is unclear to the whole world”.
Trump, meanwhile, has said he would impose 200% tariffs on the Asian nation if it invades Taiwan – though Chinese political commentator and former lecturer at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, Wu Qiang, suggests a Trump win could still “be a major advantage for China”.
“It would signify deeper divisions within American democracy.
“Amid division with Europe and America's global allies, the US will revert to a new form of isolationism, which was already evident during Trump's previous term.”
Elizabeth Freund Larus, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, disagreed with this assertion in a conversation with DW, arguing that Trump was likely to remain close to existing allies in NATO and elsewhere:
“I do not think that Trump is going to turn back the clock and stop working with these alliances that are taking a firmer shape.”
Of Harris, she said that the vice president is “more likely to engage and want to get the US-China relationship back on some type of a track”.
Other views
Elsewhere in Asia, officials in India’s government have expressed upbeat sentiment regardless of the outcome of the election.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s minister of external affairs, said recently that “we have every confidence that we will be able to work with the president of the United States, whoever he or she will be”.
On African affairs, Harris is likely to stick to current president Joe Biden’s ‘US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa’, says the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Senior fellow at the organisation’s Africa programme, Cameron Hudson, writes:
“Trump’s blatantly transactional approach to policymaking comes off to some African leaders as a more direct and transparent way of doing business—and mirrors how many of them already pursue relations with their partners.”
This, he argues, echoes China’s rhetoric of ‘A Partnership of Equals’ with African nations.
Harris, meanwhile, has been positive in her public pronouncements on Africa’s prospects, stating during a 2023 visit to Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia that she had made the visit to “highlight and advance the extraordinary creativity, ingenuity, and dynamism on the continent”.
