Experts: US-EU relations are at a new low — and forever damaged

Asked by reporters if he agreed with Hegseth's comments, Trump answered: “Yeah, I think they've been freeloading. The European Union's been absolutely terrible to us on trade, terrible.”

More planks on the transatlantic bridge are expected to fall next week when Trump says he will announce a slew of new tariffs on April 2, what he's dubbed “Liberation Day.” European goods are expected to be hit hard and a full-blown trade war seems likely.

A February speech Vance made at the Munich Security Conference can be seen as the defining moment that crystallized a breakup in the making.

In the speech, the vice president accused European leaders of betraying democracy by blocking far-right nationalist parties into government and for seeking to curtail the spread of far-right viewpoints, which he called censorship.

Vance also said it was deeply undemocratic to annul presidential elections in Romania last December over allegations they were compromised by Russian interference. Călin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian and anti-NATO candidate, was on track to win the elections before the race was canceled. Since then, Georgescu has been banned from running in the fresh elections and faces charges of undermining the constitutional order.

Vance's statements made it clear America under Trump stands on the side of the far right in Europe and far-right leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who want to wreck the EU and its pan-European aims based around liberal democracy, the rule of law and free markets.

“You have an administration, not just Trump, but many in the administration, who not only do not see the value of a European Union, but they are actively trying to undermine Europe,” said Scott Lucas, a professor of international politics at University College Dublin.

An impending breakup

Of course, this isn't the first rough moment in transatlantic relations. Indeed, the friendship has long been marked by discord and mistrust.

There was former French President Charles de Gaulle, who kicked American troops off French soil in 1966. Burning American flags was commonplace during anti-war protests in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, Europeans marched against the placement of U.S. nuclear warheads in their countries.

In the 1980s, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan blasted Europeans for buying oil and natural gas from the Soviet Union. In 2003, after France refused to back the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the cafeteria in the U.S. Congress renamed French fries to “freedom fries.”

But these spats in the past did not present a “systemic challenge” to the alliance like what's taking place now, Lucas said.

In part, the Trump administration's antagonism toward the EU can be explained by its dislike for multilateral organizations, Lucas said.

“This is a transactional administration,” he said. “It is the idea that they don't really think of win-win politics, they think win-lose politics.”

He said this approach is domineering in both domestic and foreign affairs.

“The idea is that you don't need the courts, you don't need Congress, you don't need the U.S. agencies, you just need loyalists,” he said. “They pursue an autocratic approach to foreign policy and that you don't need allies. You don't need partnerships as such. You simply need transactions where you can reap a profit from it.”

Today's Europe was born from the ashes of World War II and the EU was built with consensus and multilateralism at its core with the idea that this model would prevent another descent into war, Lucas said.

But he said the Trump administration seems void of the “collective memory” of the horrors of World War II and the necessity to uphold multilateralism to prevent war.

“You're in an existential moment, not just for the EU and U.S. but for the whole notion of international order,” he said. “For the first time since the late '40s, you have got a major actor who doesn't believe in those rules in that order and that's the U.S.”

He predicted the looming breakup between the U.S. and EU may happen quickly.

“I don't think it's going to be slow and gradual necessarily,” he said. “It could be much more quick than we realize.”

He said Europe has the economic might to go its own way and that new alliances are forming as Canada, Europe, Australia and others see the need of building bridges.

Laffan said Europe will respond to the rupture with the U.S. by building up its own militaries and forging new alliances, as seen with efforts by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to muster a “coalition of the willing” to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.

“That program is already underway and will continue because the Europeans are not going to say, 'Roll over us, we're not interested in our future prosperity or our future security,'” she said. “They're going to take agency.”

Amid this turmoil, she said the EU sees Ukraine's fate as its most pressing concern because it cannot allow Trump to force Kyiv into capitulating to Russia.

“If there is a ceasefire or peace process, would this be a capitulation of Ukraine? In which case, Europe then has a very unstable Russian domination in the near-abroad, which is very dangerous,” she said. “Or can those countries like Ukraine and Moldova continue to aspire to a European future, which is what their people want?”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau