Europe could be a casualty under Donald Trump’s promised American ‘golden age’

“In his first term, Trump was obsessed with the U.S. trade deficit with the EU. In his view, this is no different (other than being smaller) to the US concerns about its trade deficit with China,” Zach Meyers, assistant director of the Centre for European Reform, told Fortune. 

“If the US applies more tariffs on China, that risks a larger volume of Chinese exports being dumped in Europe. In turn, that could force the EU to follow the U.S. in increasing tariffs in order to protect European industry, raising the risks of an all-out trade war with China,” said Meyers.

...Under a Trump-led America, Europe’s focus should be to strike a good deal that exempts its goods from being charged. 

But that’s easier said than done, Meyers points out. 

“Trump sympathizers like Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy will break ranks and secure deals for their own countries, leaving the rest of the EU out in the cold.”