![Transatlantic Rift with Matthew Kaminski [PODCAST]](https://4liberty.eu/phidroav/2025/03/LEP_Matthew-Kaminski-1024x1024.png "Transatlantic Rift with Matthew Kaminski [PODCAST]")
Is Donald Trump’s presidency the beginning of a new era in the global world order? What is there to know about economic disruption and globalization in this context? And is the European Union overreacting in its response to the recent events or rather attempting to ‘make Europe great again’? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Matthew Kaminski, POLITICO’s Editor-at-Large, writing regularly on global politics. He is the co-founder of POLITICO Europe, a pan-European publication created in 2014 through a joint-venture with Axel Springer, and a former Editor-in-Chief of POLITICO from 2019-2023.
Leszek Jazdzewski (LJ): For the past eighty years, we have lived first in a post-World War II world, then in a post-Cold War period. With Donald Trump as the president of the United States, do you think that we are now entering a new era?
Matthew Kaminski (MK): Maybe. Europeans are reacting to very real things and are finally understanding that there have been shifts in American popular opinion as well as in the American government’s view of the transatlantic relations and of Europe.
There is always a danger if you refuse to listen to what politicians are saying – whether that politician is Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump on the campaign trail. And if Donald Trump repeats over and over again that the Europeans ‘are screwing us,’ that Europe is founded as ‘our enemies’ and that this is a tough track, then these statements have real consequences. We are seeing these consequences in practice already in the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency in the way the current U.S. administration has handled the diplomacy of Europe.
There is also a danger in overreacting to these signals. Presidents change, and they can change radically. Politics and elections have significant consequences. At the same time, national interests do not change that dramatically. And the reasons why the United States was so engaged in Europe for the last 80 years are still the reasons why the USA should probably stay engaged in Europe going forward. The Pax Americana is a dirty word now for the American right, but it is a great setup for American prosperity and a very cheap way to further American economic and political goals.
The thing about Donald Trump is that he is so loud and, therefore, the pendulum swings hard in one direction. As a result, we are certainly seeing a pushback from the Europeans as well as domestically in the United States. Some of the questions that are currently being asked are thus how is it in the U.S. interest to pick fights with Canada and Mexico that are so essential to America’s prosperity in terms of the supply chain as regards the biggest trading partners we have? How is it in the U.S. interest to blow up a relationship with Europe and what did it really mean?
It meant that European governments bought U.S. weapons because they have thought they were buying an insurance policy with the United States. That Europeans created this commercial bridge across the Atlantic that is five or ten times bigger in the commercial relationship than the one the United States has with China. That Europe was a staging ground for American military might and its ability to project power. So those things still remain true.
As such, the danger lies in over-reading what Donald Trump says and not understanding that the actual ‘doing’ of all that can still be influenced, it is still not settled. And it is in the interests of both the United States and Europe to keep a vital transatlantic relationship – because it is much better to be in a post-war era than in the pre-war era, in which you are breaking up coalitions that have kept Russia, China and other authoritarian countries in check. This scenario would also mean breaking up systems that undergird our prosperity in the United States. I worry about the overreaction – certainly from Trump’s people, but also on this side.
Interestingly, I was recently in Brussels and Paris, and I do think the French and the British are hearing from Trump privately that he does not want to pull the United States out of Europe and that there is an opening there to work with them. Is it easy? No. Are they obnoxious? Yes, JD Vance is. (Imagine if a European leader went to the USA and gave some major speech where they insult 360 million Americans!) But it is still in the U.S. interest and in the European interest to stick together. Nevertheless, the trust has definitely been broken, or at least severely hurt.
LJ: Is the approach towards globalization changing in the United States in general?
MK: There is a certain phenomenon that is currently happening on the American right or in the coalition that Donald Trump has both created and energized. This phenomenon is driven by two things. First, the way the global economy has been created in the last eighty years is bad for working Americans by letting immigrants take your jobs, by importing goods that you should be producing here in the United States, by leaving a lot of the ‘middle America’ feeling that it has been screwed by someone, as it is always easier to blame someone else than yourself.
The second part of this phenomenon is related to the fact that the Iraq war and the post-9/11 Bush presidency was what galvanized the left early on. What is a mostly forgotten, somehow, with a very strange delay, has become an issue for the American right. When Donald Trump says, ‘I am the president of peace,’ he is doing actually what Barack Obama did in 2008 by being against the Iraq war. He is saying, ‘I am not going to bring that poor kid from a small town in Ohio to fight wars on behalf of a globalist elite that serves the interests of some deep state and foreigners. And I’m going to just defend what’s good for America,’ it is pretty simple populism, but it also is the hangover from the global financial crisis of 2009, 2010, and the continuing degradation of the manufacturing economy – for plenty of good reasons. It is the hangover from an overextension of American military power to completely different parts of the world than Europe. That is the core. The thing is, this is not half the country – it is not even the majority, but rather about 25-30% of all Americans, which consists of the hardcore MAGA constituency.
Donald Trump is like a lot of presidents – like Joe Biden, actually, when he came into the office. Did he move to the center? No, he actually moved to the left, where he thought the Democratic party’s heart was. Now Trump is where the current Republican party’s heart is. But the party’s brain – and his brain – should be much more in the center. It is remarkable to see how fast what he is currently doing is happening.
We thought we were heading for the American economy doing great. Instead, we are talking about a recession. The stock market is down 10 points in just a minute. This is the worst performing stock market for the beginning of a presidency in the century. The consumer confidence and the confidence of CEOs are also down. Meanwhile, inflation is up – and will soon continue to head up, with the tariffs coming in place.
In this light, there is definitely something happening in the United States when it comes to the American popular opinion. However, if we look at the surveys, people hate Vladimir Putin, while big majorities (including in the Republican Party) think America should be the leader in the world. Therefore, I would not overreact to Trump’s high noise levels.
All of this can also be dangerous for the outside world. America did not suddenly wake up and become a completely different country than it was on January 19th or 20th, when Trump came to office.
LJ: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are claiming that they will disrupt not only our politics and governments, but also commerce culture. What is the noise or exaggeration and what is the real disruption here?
MK: They are definitely disrupting the world order, that is obvious. Are they doing it in a way that if they were put on the truth serum, they would say that they are doing it in such a way that the effects are exactly what they hope to see happen? I think that if they were given a truth serum, they would say, ‘Huh, there are some unintended consequences here that we did not quite expect.’ They certainly did not expect to have issues in the stock market. Tariffs are a big part of it, but so is Elon Musk, who is going into the U.S. government and starting to simply break a number of things.
It is one thing to reform the U.S. government, that is fine. Everyone thinks it should get smaller. Some agencies should be deregulated or shut down, that is fine too. However, the way it is been done, seemingly without any plan, has spooked the markets and the American business. The United States is a very pragmatic country. It is a country that is built around making money and people are not making money right now.
Another thing that has happened, which seems unexpected for the Trump administration, is the fact that the MAGA community believes that America is in decline. JD Vance truly does believe this. Therefore, we have to rein it back in, protect our part of the planet. This means that if Vladimir Putin has his way, his part of Europe, so be it; China has its sphere of influence, and that is fine too. But what Donald Trump is now doing, he is actually accelerating the potential for the American decline by questioning whether the world should be paying for American deficits, whether the dollar still remains a safe currency. All of this cannot be intended.
Another unintended consequence (or not, that is debatable) is the fact that Donal Trump’s presidency has saved Vladimir Putin. Putin was not doing very well in early January 2025. Inflation in Russia was high. Interest rates were super high. He lost thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of people in his war waged on Ukraine. And he talked to people at NATO saying that he cannot continue for another year. Meanwhile, Trump has given Putin a ‘get out of jail’ free card.
Furthermore, internally, when it comes to Elon Musk, the sales of his Teslas are collapsing. People hate the product. Their share price has been halved. As a result, Musk has lost in personal net worth about USD 170 billion since the start of this administration. Still, it is no reason for him to cry, as he still has USD 300 billion, but that is not the way they were hoping this would play out.
The Trump administration wanted to show that things are changing and that they are not going to be slow. However, it is really important to remember that Trump won the pragmatic vote. True, he was still his noisy self and said crazy things, but he was quite pragmatic and risk averse at the same time. This seems to no longer be the case, at least for now, on some really important issues. However, it does not mean that that is not there.
The beauty of Donald Trump is that he can just say ‘A’ today and ‘B’ tomorrow without any apology. He is known to change his mind very, very quickly. This is why it is so important for not just the formal checks on his power to still be in place – from the Congress, the courts, the media even, – but also the informal ones, from business and the allies that engage and try to steer Trump in another direction. Because he is not getting that directly from his cabinet right now, nor even from his supporters. But even Donald Trump realizes that the world is a lot bigger and more complex.
LJ: You once wrote, and I quite agree, that the best way to respond to autocrats is by projecting the American strength. Is this administration really projecting this strength? What should the U.S. strategy towards China and other autocrats be under Donald Trump, who seems to actually admire these autocratic leaders?
MK: Yes, he does admire the autocratic groups, he admires them aesthetically. That is the style that Donald Trump wants, and he feels comfortable with it. He also respects power and thinks that the United States is a big country that should be striking deals with little countries. (Europe – a bunch of little countries. Ukraine – a little country.)
Imagine him treating Putin in the Oval Office the way he treated President Zelensky – that is impossible to imagine. However, if we are talking about projecting the American power, something crazy is happening at the moment. As of two months ago, the United States was by far the strongest economy on the planet. It had great growth prospects, inflation was under control, and the military was unmatched. It seemed that Trump had all the cards – to use his phrase, – in his hand, including President Zelensky. If you were a Chinese super-agent, someone at the KGB, or a crazy left-run radical in France or even the U.S., and you were to devise a plan to undermine the American power in four weeks, you could not do better than what he has done here on every single pillar.
What is the pillar of the American strength? It is the economy. The fact that the dollar is the fiat currency, and that the world pays our debts undermine this strength. Meanwhile, trade, which keeps America prosperous, is in danger. Immigration, which is responsible for our ability to bring in the best people in the world to work in the United States, is in danger too.
The other pillar of the American power also collapsed after that. The rule of law has been the most important thing going back centuries of why the United States has been so prosperous. That is now in question. Now, you could say this is apocalyptic – and there are some people who actually think that, maybe, the next move for Trump is to invoke the martial law because he does not agree with the courts.
To me, however, it seems more like the Herbert Stein quote, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”. As such, it seems unsustainable as a package from the point of view of the vast majority of Americans. The stock market is going down by 10%, not 25%. His approval ratings have flipped from above 50% to 45% now and are heading down – but he is not at 30% yet. In this light, I am not sure we have reached the ‘peak Trump’, but this does not seem like a sustainable outcome for him. But, again, he does also seem like he is convinced that he is doing the right thing – and if that is the case, then we are in for a pretty tough few months.
LJ: A big part of the current conversation is Europe’s response to Donald Trump, especially in the digital and economic areas. It seems almost impossible to disentangle Europe from the United States technologically. What do you think Europeans should do now? Apart from, of course, not overreacting.
MK: In a way, Donald Trump is helping make Europe great again by kicking you where it hurts. Hopefully, it does not mean that Europe is going to become Russian again, which is the real danger in all of this. The fact that the core of Europe (meaning Germany, France, and the UK) had been woken up saved Keir Starmer’s premiership. Also, Emmanuel Macron has a new lease on life. Meanwhile, the French feel really good, as they have been saying for decades that you cannot trust the Americans. The Germans should become stronger – they may need to be rearmed and take a national leadership role.
The recent events have also shown where Europe does have strengths. Although it may seem that America is having a complete psychotic meltdown, the European narrative of decline is also overdone. Europe has incredible manufacturing talent and human capital, amazing civil universities. True, it does face some significant problems – but look at Poland. Poland is going to pass Japan in terms of GDP per capita and PPP terms within three years. This is crazy to think about. Poland has had 30 plus years of uninterrupted growth, which has transformed the country. It is spending 5% of its GDP on defense. It is now a real, serious player in this part of the world.
If the message from the United States is that Europe has to take care of its own backyard, then okay, fine, embrace it and go forward with it. Still, ultimately, America is a European power. And, again, it was only a few weeks ago when we were the most important ally by far. However, the Europeans should seriously re-rearm.
Ukraine is a test case for Trump, which he may fail, but we shall see. People around him say that he does not want sell it out to Russia. Clearly, Europe has ten times the size of the economy of Russia – Russia is a basket case. It is a third world country with a gas station and some nuclear weapons. We just have nuclear weapons here.
Europe is now facing a moment to be serious, but it is not a moment to become hysterical, including about the United States. Europe is a fantastically successful military alliance, which is a result of the post-World War II architecture – it was created out of great horror, but is, actually, incredibly strong and still wise.
The U.S. Constitution has been around since the 1780s and it is still pretty damn good. Therefore, just because America seems like it is being self-destructive, you should not be self-destructive here, and Europe should really feel good about the way that I ha’s come together in response to the recent developments.
Still, the danger for Europe is that an individual European country will attempt to do their own deals with Washington, or that, once again, Europe loses its focus, or that the same political forces we have seen in the United States – and which, by the way, we saw in Europe first, with Viktor Orban and Hungary or with Marine Le Pen in France – will be allowed to win power. Even as we are thinking about the defense issue, migration has to be thought about seriously.
Europe should also use this moment to deregulate and do to Europe what Poland did to itself 30 years ago. You need to open up and liberalize itself, which will lead to a lot better things. Because the human capital is already here; it is just the rules that need to change.
This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with Movimento Liberal Social and Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.