Two experts have told Euronews that Trump’s bellicose rhetoric towards America’s allies is playing to Russia’s advantage. Aiming to do deals on trade deficits and raw materials in exchange for continued military support is the best policy given the circumstances Europe faces.
Trump’s ‘chaotic’ actions targeting EU partners as well as Canadian and Mexican neighbours with tariffs is ‘exactly what Russia wants’, experts on US and Russian policy told Euronews in The Europe Conversation.
“This sort of instability in American institutions is sort of chaos. It’s exactly what Russia wants and it’s exactly what they exploit to amplify discord, to amplify polarization, to attack American leadership”, David Salvo, co-director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund.
It “only plays to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping’s advantage. That’s what they want. They want democratic instability. They want a weak, distracted, internal turmoil in the United States, specifically because it means we take our eye off the ball on our global responsibilities. And Russia and China can prey on that”, he said.
In recent weeks, Trump has signed executive orders impacting some of America’s biggest trading partners and military allies with blanket tariffs on aluminum and steel.
He’s also threatening further tariffs, and says he’s serious about Canada becoming the 51st state of the US. He also says he’s serious about the US taking over Greenland and Gaza.
Meanwhile America’s allies are treading carefully despite the fact that he is threatening their territory and economic prosperity given the highly perilous state of the world, in particular the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine which Europe sees as an existential threat.
Rachael Dean Wilson, co-director director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy says Trump’s imposition of tariffs are an opening gambit in order to extract concessions from allies, including Ukraine.
Tariffs are “a tool that he has expressed great love for, and I think it’s something tangible that it’s easy for him to explain”, she said. “I think if we know anything about Donald Trump, it’s about a deal. And so you should view kind of the opening tariff discussion is an opening discussion of a deal”, said Dean Wilson.
This is likely to include the US doing a deal on Ukrainian rare earth materials and other raw materials in exchange for consistent, prolonged military support and security guarantees. “There are real economic and technological and all sorts all sorts of derivatives of like the raw mineral, raw material that Ukraine has that is probably at the forefront of the administration’s thinking”, said Salvo.
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