Do you want to stop Trump from bullying your country? Revenge | Donald Trump

IIn February of last year, Donald Trump held his first full Cabinet meeting of his second term in the White House. He has proudly announced his intention to impose sweeping tariffs on the United States’ closest allies in Europe. When a reporter asked him whether Europe might respond, Trump seemed confident. “They can’t,” he said. Pressed to clarify, he continued, “We are a pot of gold. We are the one everyone wants. They can take revenge, but it cannot be a successful revenge.” In Trump’s view, Europe was weak and powerless – a small fish compared to the giant American economic might. When Europe faces an American president willing to put pressure on his country, it will certainly surrender.

In the year since, Trump has repeatedly used American economic power against Europe, from forcing the EU and the UK to swallow lopsided trade deals to pressuring Denmark to sell him Greenland. Time and again, his assessment of European countries – which he says will turn towards him with hat in hand, eager to make a deal – has been proven correct.

To survive another three years of Trump, European leaders will need a different approach. Having spent years as a State Department official designing and negotiating sanctions, I have seen how economic pressure works in practice – and how it can fail when the target is willing to absorb the pain and retaliate.

India, Brazil, and China have faced similar Trump-style economic coercion, and have managed to survive while preserving their core interests. In the process, they have proven themselves to be serious geoeconomic players who cannot be bullied. Although their strategies differ, each of them combines three elements: determination, resilience, and revenge. Europe will need these three countries to be able to resist Trump while maintaining its dignity.

The first step is to mobilize public support for the challenge. While losing access to the US market is painful – the US is the world’s largest importer after all – for most countries it is possible to survive. India is an example of this. Last summer, upset by his Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rejection of his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump imposed a 50% tax on India, making it among the most tariff-imposing countries in the world. Instead of hastily writing his Nobel Prize nomination speech, Modi stuck to his guns. “India will never compromise the interests of its farmers, ranchers and fishermen,” he declared.

Modi’s determination has galvanized the Indian people. Lawmakers coordinated boycotts of American products, and companies refused to lower prices to continue selling in the American market. Ultimately, Trump became frustrated and turned his attention elsewhere. By refusing to appease and willing to endure short-term pain, India weathered Trump’s attack and gained grudging respect in the White House.

The second step is to redirect the trade. At about the same time that his relationship with Modi collapsed, Trump entered into a fight with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula committed the sin of allowing his government to prosecute his predecessor, right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, for plotting a coup after his electoral defeat in 2022. In an attempt to force Lula to drop the charges, Trump imposed heavy tariffs on Brazilian goods and imposed sanctions on the Supreme Court judge who was overseeing Bolsonaro’s case.

Brazil’s response has focused on adaptation. Instead of scrambling to regain access to the United States, Lula’s government moved quickly to redirect toward other markets. Shipments of beef and coffee destined for America have been redirected to China, the Gulf and Southeast Asia, with the help of state-backed financing and quiet coordination with buyers. By the end of the year, Brazilian exports hit a record high, while American consumers complained about the high prices of their morning coffee. After failing to force Lula to do so, Trump eventually removed the tariffs and lifted the sanctions from a Brazilian judge. By demonstrating Brazil’s resilience in the face of American pressure, Lula stripped Trump of his influence.

The third and final step is revenge. During Trump’s first term, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with a group of CEOs before the opening round of US tariffs took effect. “In the West, you have the idea that if someone hits you on the left cheek, you turn the other cheek,” Shi said. “In our culture, we fight back.”

At the time, Beijing was not prepared for an economic war. But it has begun carefully mapping the choke points it could one day use as a weapon against the United States. When Trump returned to the White House and quickly unleashed a new wave of tariffs and technological restrictions on China, Beijing revealed its plan: In addition to retaliating with Trump’s higher tariffs, it would block America’s access to the rare earth minerals it needs to build everything from cars to fighter planes. With China refining 90% of the global supply of these minerals, the impact was immediate, forcing companies such as Ford and Suzuki to close factories. The double whammy of tariffs and restrictions on rare earth elements has wiped trillions of dollars off the U.S. stock market and stoked fears of a recession. Trump hastily agreed to a truce, and within months he allowed Chinese companies to buy powerful Nvidia AI chips and referred to the United States and China as “G2.”

The Greenland crisis was not the first time Trump threatened economic war against Europe, and it will not be the last. Europe needs a strategy.

Like Modi, European leaders must show resolve – rallying their publics to accept some economic pain in defense of their independence. A number of leaders have begun to move in this direction, but efforts remain uneven, and Trump will read the division as weakness. Like Lula, Europe will also need to improve its economic resilience. Here, the European Union made the greatest progress, as the European Union concluded new trade agreements with South American countries and India.

But any European strategy will fail unless it also learns from Xi Jinping. Retaliation makes many in Europe uncomfortable, and for good reason. However, the transatlantic relationship is not one-way dependence; It is one of interdependence. Silicon Valley makes a large share of its profits in Europe. American ambitions to manufacture advanced semiconductors at home would collapse without Dutch chipmaking equipment. European investors own $8 trillion worth of US stocks and bonds.

Europe, of course, should not be reduced to playing all these cards. The result will be economic disaster for both sides. What Europe needs is something simpler and more credible: a plan to play together when the next crisis comes.

Over the past year, Europe has learned that Trump’s economic threats will not go away on their own. They only stop when it becomes too expensive.

Edward Fishman is director of the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Choke Points: How Economic Warfare is Changing the World (published by Elliott & Thomson in the UK and Portfolio in the US).

Further reading

The Economic Consequences of Trump: What a Trade War Means for the World by Philip Kogan (Personal File, £7.99)

The Fractured Age: How the Return of Geopolitics Will Split the Global Economy by Neil Shearing (John Murray, £25)

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Five Hundred Years of the Checkered History of Economic Muscle and Military Power by Paul Kennedy (William Collins, £16.99)