Is Trump better for us?

We Europeans cannot vote on November 5 in elections that affect us a lot. Either of the two contenders, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, can win them. Winning means obtaining a majority in the Electoral College, and today, it depends on what happens in seven States, because the results in the others are set. At the national level, Harris is winning. But they are the rules, although the winner’s ability will also depend on which parties control both houses of Congress, and the Democrats appear to be making progress. From Europe, who is best for us to win the presidency, the White House? Paradoxically, it could be Trump.

The first reason is that Trump would end the war in Ukraine, which should never have taken place, for which Putin is responsible, but who has made strategic mistakes since the end of the Cold War has been the West and in particular the US. How would Trump end this war, as he has promised? It’s still a mystery. Necessarily cutting off the tap of arms and financial aid to kyiv and putting pressure on Moscow on territorial matters. Inevitably at a cost for both parties.

Who this war has benefited the most is China, which has taken over the leadership of the so-called Global South, and the United States, especially its military-industrial complex, denounced at the time by President Eisenhower. Today we tend to talk more about the “deep state.” Trump does not belong establishment, nor to this deep State that he accuses of his defeat in 2020 and of persecuting him judicially. But not belonging to establishment It is not the same as not favoring the powerful or stopping financing the complex, with modernizations rather than wars. Trump did not get into any war. Biden, already in two: that of Ukraine and that of the Middle East.

If Trump wins and manages to stop the war – neither of the two things is a foregone conclusion – NATO, for which the former president does not have great appreciation, would have to face its fourth failure (not defeat) in a row: Afghanistan (from which Biden left hastily and immorally, see the fate of their women), Iraq, Libya, and now Ukraine. The big loser, whatever happens, is a Europe that has further increased its dependence in almost every order on the United States. The one that speaks of “strategic autonomy”.

Which would lead us to the second advantage of a Trump victory: Europe would have to step up because it will be able to count less on American military protection. Strategic autonomy would no longer be a desire but a necessity. Trump, with his threats in his first term, has forced greater military spending from NATO allies in exchange for maintaining the Alliance. But what he wanted was for this greater European spending to be on American weapons. Europe surely has to spend more given global uncertainties, but on weapons coming from its factories. It has to compete with the US in the industrial field. Biden has allocated enormous public funds to the reindustrialization of the United States, but as happened with Trump, not what is necessary for infrastructure, some of which is a disaster. In cutting-edge industries, Europe is falling behind. All this has been highlighted by Mario Draghi in his magnificent report, which, sadly, will not be applied, unless a change in Washington forces a change in Europe.

And then there are the tariffs and limitations on high-tech exports to China, which Trump started in his first term, and which have been reinforced under Biden. Harris will likely maintain and reinforce them. Trump would raise tariffs all azimuths. Not only for China (60% in some products that it considers strategic) but for Europe (20%), and an even greater deregulation that will drag everyone down. Trump’s trade policies will harm the world, as Martin Wolf predicts. He already did, and Biden not only maintained them, but increased them. Of course, despite the regrets, much of the US’s advanced technology still needs a specialized Chinese workforce, unlike four decades ago, and raw materials such as rare earths that China controls.

For various reasons, Europe needs an autonomous China policy from the US. But we must not be mistaken either: This Europe is divided, over the US, over China, over the need for a European industrial policy and not merely “national champions”, over immigration… This way it will not be able to advance. It will have to invent a new model, at various speeds, with internal mini coalitions (as Spain proposes to break the impasse on the advancement of the capital market) in various areas. Perhaps according to the successful model of Airbus, of those who want and can, of a more confederal nature without thereby dismantling the federalizing pattern (not federal) at 27. Let us also not be mistaken: in the end, if it has to choose, this Europe will always choose stick to US security, even if it is with Trump.

That said, a Trump victory would present great disadvantages and dangers for Europe, beyond the unpredictability of the tycoon who has hijacked and transformed the Republican Party. To begin with, Trumpian Washington, very different from the first term that practically caught him by surprise; This time he will be ready. And it can become the center of an Ultraconservative, regressive International, which covers not only movements of this type in Europe – where they advance independently of what happens in the US – but throughout the planet, especially where there are free elections (such as Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Milei in Argentina). With financing, think tanks and production of ideology, disinformation and lies, the politics of insult, etc. These are not the conservatives and Republicans of yesteryear.

Europe and the West in general would continue to lose, to the benefit of China, in their relations with the so-called Global South, a process that began a long time ago because it is not that the world has changed, it is that it has mutated. We have changed ages. After the one in Ukraine, this Global South sees the war in the Middle East as a fault not only of Israel, but of the United States and, by extension, of the West. The Biden Administration has not known or wanted to stop Israel, to which it continues to unconditionally supply weapons (those it gives to Ukraine are conditional). Trump did have a policy towards the area based on the so-called Abraham Accords, which abandoned the Palestinians to their fate. Harris does not seem to have clear ideas on the matter; he is making electoral balances. When the issue is not just Israel or the Palestinians, but, above all, Iran.

Inequality in the US, something that the Democrats had stopped paying attention to, and the purchasing power of citizens are issues that have returned with a vengeance, although Trump intends to solve them by lowering taxes, and Harris by increasing some. And inequality in the world? There are fewer and fewer who believe in Sustainable Development Goals whose fulfillment is moving further away instead of closer.

Depending on how they evolve, some internal US issues can have negative effects on the rest of the world, even more so with the aforementioned Ultraconservative International. For example, in women’s rights, with abortion in the first place (an issue that could cause Trump to lose the elections), those of LGBTI people, and others. It would also happen, in the event of a Trump victory, with democracy. In a second term, Trump could grant a pardon to himself and his cronies, for which he would have the power. And he would “cleanse” the Administration of those who were not unconditionally loyal. This time he has had time to prepare it.

If American institutions have endured a first Trump term – although the Supreme Court, with its appointments, has been seriously affected for years –, they could endure a second. And last? The possibility of a third term would require a constitutional reform for which there does not seem to be time. There is also Trump’s age: on January 20, if he is sworn in as president, he will be 78 years old.

Will a second and final term, or a defeat, mean the end of Trumpism? Let’s not make that mistake of vision from Europe. Trump and Trumpism have taken control of the Republican Party, and respond to an important part of American society that has been radicalizing and polarizing for years. Trump is both effect and cause. There are those who believe that he has no successor, someone with even similar charisma for his followers. Indeed, he does not have it among the possible ones that are glimpsed today, although the smell of power works miracles. There is a character who could be tempted. The richest man in the world – much richer than Trump – who has proven to be a successful visionary entrepreneur who today controls essential sectors, such as the internet from space (without his satellites, the Ukrainians would not have been able to communicate), the first electric cars advanced technologies, reusable rockets, advanced humanoid robots, the future direct link of the human brain to the digital, to Artificial Intelligence, and Trump himself, no real alternative has emerged. He is Elon Musk, one of Trump’s main supporters in this campaign. Although he has an insurmountable limit: he cannot aspire to be president having been born outside the territory of the United States, in Pretoria, South Africa, where he was trained with the apartheid. His figure will influence with and without Trump.

This campaign does not need Russian manipulations like in 2016. Trump is his own manipulator-in-chief. Check it out in this selection of his rallies and public appearances since Biden gave up in favor of Harris, which he has compiled and analyzed The New York Times. Afterwards, it will be clear to you who truly suits us best.