A little over 12 years ago at the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos, German Chancellor Angela Merkel observed that Europe had only seven per cent of the global population, and had twenty-five per cent of world GDP, but accounted for some fifty per cent of global social expenditure and questioned whether this scenario could be sustainable in the long term. It was a theme that she would bring up now and then during the remainder of her term in office.
Her main concern was that European economies were finding growth difficult and that they compared poorly with many of their competitors. In emphasising the amount spent on social services, was there a hint that Europe was neglecting another important matter like, say, defence?
Across the Atlantic there were many who reasoned that Europe's comfy welfare states were being paid for indirectly by American taxpayers. All European countries had run down their armed forces and defence budgets, particularly after the end of the Cold War. Some members of NATO contributed very little and the more involved generally required substantial material backup, almost from the start of any conflict.
Taking the UK as a case in point and using figures from the research platform Macrotrends, in 1960 the UK's defence budget was just over seven per cent of GDP. In 1968 it dropped below six per cent and by 1977 below five per cent. Since 1994 (3.38%) it has never exceeded three per cent. Britain's under-resourced involvement in Iraq in 2003 recorded a figure of 2.55 per cent for that year and between 2016 and 2019 inclusive the figure was below two per cent. The figures include service pay and pensions.
As Britain, along with France, tended to be the more active members this side of the Atlantic and don't normally come in for too much criticism, our effort would still be insufficient to compensate for the lack from others. It would always be too little for an American who by 2011 was expressing an interest in running for the presidency. Maybe even to his own surprise, after announcing his candidacy in June 2015, Donald Trump became the 47th President of the United States in 2017, and has now returned to office this year for a second term.
Throughout Mr Trump's 2016 campaign he continually emphasised how hard done by the rest of the world the United States was treated and his exhortation to ‘Make America Great Again’ with appropriate action was going to go a long way to make amends. One target would be the by now fairly longstanding North America Free Trade Agreement signed by Canada, Mexico and the United States which had come into force in 1994. Quite simply, if either of the two junior parties ran a surplus the United States was being treated unfairly and the Agreement (NAFTA) would be up for renegotiation. Another pet hate, the EU, it was claimed by Trump, had been set up to be against America. NATO was "obsolete".
During President Trump's first term in office, no surprises, NAFTA was renegotiated and on trade more generally, the President put into motion the world's biggest ever decoupling in history, America's trade with China - though still clipping along at about $350bn in China's favour. Yet Trump's liking for President Xi Jinping of China I'm sure is genuine enough and he hopes to go to Beijing, maybe as early as next month to hammer out a deal. President Trump is nothing if not full of contradictions.
Europe is another matter and it appears that the "Leader of the Free World" does not look upon us in a very positive light. (Britain thinks/hopes this just applies to the EU and rest of Europe but I'm not so sure). An inkling for what the future might hold can be found back in 2018.
The 2018 G7 Summit at Charlevoix, Canada, was hosted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and might go down in history as a game changer - the French would rename it as the G6+1. President Trump was in good form and insulted Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and threatened to "send him 25 million ethnic Mexicans (and you'll be out of office very soon)". Good start and he would go on to attack allies while championing Russia, criticising NATO, EU and Europe. The President and members of his party also went on to insult their host with derogatory remarks, behaviour that all now seems to be fairly standard.
There's a clip where he tells the world, "We're the piggy bank everyone keeps robbing", though I cannot be certain this was at Charlevoix - there are just so many clips! The most famous momento from the 2018 summit is undoubtedly the Merkel-Trump stare down photo where the President is sitting with his arms crossed whilst the German Chancellor stands before him, hands pressed hard on the table between them and both glowering at each other. President Trump left the summit early and refused to endorse the final communiqué.
Looking back on some of this can be rather funny but the fate of millions can be affected. At Charlevoix, Trump made it very clear to everyone that "Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world" and he pressed all present to recognise that Crimea had been and should continue to be part of Russia.
Out of office and on 23 February 2022 a six-minute broadcast on MSNBC of Trump on Ukraine can surely only be interpreted as the former president endorsing the Russian invasion of Ukraine: "So Putin is now saying, 'It's independent', a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force … He's very savvy. I know him well, very, very well" - comments made after seeing more tanks than he had ever seen before.
After President Trump was elected for a second term it was surely only a matter of time before he turned against one of his pet hates - Ukraine. Speaking on Airforce One on 10 March, he again reiterated that the Russia-Ukraine war would never have happened if he had been president and said that the war had cost America $350bn so far - and he was looking forward to getting a minerals deal. A bit of good news is that America has just about restored the security shield which had been withheld last week on his command.
How accurate a costing $325bn is, is immaterial to Trump but the costs for America which he would like returned far outweigh any principles and swing right back to EU/Europe/NATO. Since his meeting on 28 February 2025 with the ungrateful ‘Dictator Zelensky’ who was asked to leave the White House after their meeting was cut short, he has returned to an old tune with his allies. His attitude is that they are happy for America "to pay their defence bills" while refusing to purchase products from the United States: "We are supporting NATO, we are paying the bills for other countries, they're ripping us off in trade ...They won't take our cars, take our agricultural products, they wouldn't take anything; yet we are taking their cars by the millions, Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen."
And we were all glad to hear that he believed Putin wanted peace: "I believe him, I think we're doing very well with Russia.”
Europe is frustrated and furious with President Trump but also with its own apparent inconsequence, its inability to offer more than some more weapons and ammunition but nothing like the amount that could fend off Russian attacks for any length of time, never mind turn the tide in Ukraine's favour.
Fifty years of defence budgets becoming more and more marginal has meant that there is only one military industrial complex in the West and that is in Trumpland. There have been hints in the past that more needed to be done on both sides of the Atlantic and for his part The Don has never held back - but Trump 2 was never meant to happen. America First is nothing new in American politics; it has been on the go from about 1840. Trump just supercharged it in our times.
On Tuesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, representatives from Ukraine and the United States sat down to try to mend fences, discuss a proposed mineral deal, and devise some form of peace talks that will end the war between Russia and Ukraine. I just can't forget that he who pays the piper calls the tune.
