Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
President Donald Trump took aim at the globalist-led European Union this week, declaring it “nastier than China” and exposing what he says are decades of unfair trade practices that have left American workers and industries in the dust.
Speaking from the White House on Monday, May 12, Trump didn’t pull any punches. “The European Union is, in many ways, nastier than China,” he said flatly, according to a report from The Telegraph.
“We’ve just started with them. They sell us 13 million cars—we sell them none. They flood our markets with agricultural goods—we can’t get ours in. They don’t take our products. We have all the cards.”
Trump’s fiery remarks came during the announcement of a sweeping executive order to slash prescription drug prices for American consumers. The plan aims to stop U.S. citizens from subsidizing Europe’s state-controlled healthcare systems.
“The European Union has been brutal,” Trump said. “The drug companies told me horror stories. We’re done paying for Europe’s cheap medicine. Europe’s gonna have to pay more, and America is going to pay a lot less.”
The policy will either compel Big Pharma to lower prices voluntarily or face pressure from the federal government. “This is the power of the American market,” Trump emphasized. “We’re not going to be taken advantage of anymore.”
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, last week threatened retaliatory tariffs on up to €95 billion ($106 billion) worth of U.S. goods if trade talks falter—a bluff, say Trump allies. White House trade advisor Peter Navarro blasted Brussels’ threat as “a grave mistake,” warning that it would backfire spectacularly.
“Europe has been playing both sides for too long,” said Navarro. “They lecture us on democracy while shaking down our industries with one-sided regulations, suing our companies, and then whining when we push back.”
President Trump, who recently called EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “fantastic,” hasn’t met her in person this term, and now any future meeting appears contingent on Europe bringing a serious deal to the table.
Von der Leyen, for her part, said she’d only engage if a “concrete” trade proposal was in place—something Trump seems more than ready to deliver, on American terms.
With tariffs already imposed on EU metals and automobiles—and more possibly on the horizon—Trump is signaling that the US will no longer play the role of global ATM. The 10% baseline tariffs and 25% auto duties are part of a broader strategy to reverse decades of offshoring and reinvigorate domestic manufacturing.
“The globalists shipped our jobs overseas, and Brussels cheered them on,” Trump told reporters. “But we hold the cards now. This ends here.”
Interestingly, Trump’s EU criticism comes as he attempts to mend fences with Beijing. After tense trade negotiations in Switzerland, the US and China agreed to scale back mutual tariffs, cutting American levies on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%, while China slashes its countermeasures from 125% to 10%. The 90-day rollback gives both sides a bit of breathing room.
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