In “From Farce to Tragedy,” the author traces the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as a turning point in American political life. What once carried elements of chaos and dark comedy has hardened into something more deliberate and consequential. Trump’s return to power, framed by him as total vindication, has brought an unprecedented expansion of executive authority, the systematic weakening of institutions, and the normalization of personal loyalty over law. Drawing on sharp observations from leading journalists and scholars, the piece shows how emergency powers, executive orders, and transactional politics have reshaped governance at home and abroad. The result is not renewed greatness, but a spectacle of democratic erosion—an American tragedy unfolding without the comfort of a happy ending.
By Cemal Tunçdemir*
“What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending,” the American critic William Dean Howells, who was a central figure in Gilded Age American literature, once said. The second coming of Donald J. Trump to the US Presidency was not an accident of fate, nor even absurdity of democracy. It was a sequel demanded by majority of American voters that having once liked the “first season” and asked upon longer run. The real tragedy was not that Trump was Trump, that was obvious from the start, but that so many Americans mistook his loudness for conviction and saw his challenge to the rules as bravery.
“The first time around, there was something almost thrilling about Donald Trump as president,”explains American historian and journalist Thomas Frank, “The respectable world came together against him with a gratifying unanimity: the legacy media, the nonprofits, the universities, the think tanks, the tech sector, the intelligence community. Insulting this imbecile became the most rewarding pastime on earth.” By contrast, according to Frank, for much of 2025, the feeling was darker. “Absolute despair” if you will.
The difference in the second term wasn’t just the lack of the thrilling or accidental comedic elements of the first term. Donald Trump viewed his return to the White House as a profound vindication. In his telling, his four years of exile had proven that he was right about everything. About economy, about “stolen” election, about press, about elites, about universities, about institutions. This absolute conviction liberated him from all doubt, and all rules.
Trump’s unrestrained mind is on full display in a recent letter he sent to the Prime Minister of Norway as he wrote, “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
“Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality,”observes Anne Applebaum, “one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him.”
“Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 in some ways but on steroids,”compares Peter Baker, New York Times’s chief White House correspondent who have covered six US presidents, including Trump in his first term, “A lot of the things that he talked about doing or exploring in the first term -or tried but failed to do or was dissuaded from doing-he’s now doing and in spades.”
Unlike the first term, in the beginning of his second term, there was less confusion, more intent. And more so preparation. Trump has rolled out many of the Project 2025, 900-page Heritage Foundation-led blueprint, he once claimed he has nothing to do with. Many of Trump’s executive orders reshaping the government were outlined in this right-wing policy plan. From the early days of his tenure, Donald Trump began advancing Project 2025’s primary objective: the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” a term coined by his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. He has expanded the scope of executive power in ways unparalleled in modern history.
By the end of 2025, some 317,000 federal employees were out of the government, according to the Office of Personnel Management. This was the largest reduction of the federal workforce in American history. He even fired members and officials from various independent and bipartisan boards, agencies, and commissions, including dozens of inspectors general, key watchdogs for waste, fraud, and abuse across all government.
One of the things Trump learned was that it matters who is around him, Peter Baker observes, “Many of the people he surrounded himself with in his first term viewed their jobs as keeping him from going off the rails, from doing things they thought were reckless -or illegal even. This term, he’s surrounded by people who not only agree with him but are enabling him and empowering him and want to serve his desires.”
One of the Trump’s most daring test the limits of his presidential power was claiming powers that have typically resides with Congress. In his first year, executive orders have eclipsed actual legislation. Trump has signed 147 executive orders, setting a record for the most signed in any president’s first 100 days of office. By contrast, he has signed only five bills into law, a record low for the first 100 days.
What is truly worrying is that his blatant misuse of emergency powers, which are meant to temporarily increase executive authority only during urgent and rapidly developing situations. The Brennan Center has identified 123 different laws could be triggered by a presidential emergency declaration. Because these powers are extensive, strong safeguards are needed to prevent misuse. Since The National Emergencies Act lacks safeguards, a president can declare an emergency by executive order and renew it every year indefinitely. Congress may vote to terminate an emergency, but only with a veto-proof majority. This flaw was exposed when Trump declared a fake emergency to fund a border wall Congress had rejected.
As a striking example, instead of traditional tariff statutes (such as Section 301 or Section 232) he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which is not a general trade statute, to impose sweeping import taxes. To justify invoking the IEEPA, Trump Administration declared “trade deficits” a national emergency. And this audacity has led to a legal drama that has now reached the Supreme Court.
The question is why the White House team ever invoked IEEPA at all, instead of traditional trade laws? The answer is not only that IEEPA provides the President broad authority to respond to a declaration of national emergency. The real answer probably lies in “political anthropology rather than jurisprudence,”writes Gillian Tett, “Trump’s team has a power structure more akin to a royal court than anything that adheres to 21st-century norms.” He always wants to have king-like powers, and his team is looking for loopholes that would allow him to acquire those powers.
This is the posture of a man who has looked at the institutions meant to restrain him -the courts, the lawmakers, the prosecutors- have done nothing and he concluded they are toothless. After the surviving of the fallout of January 6, five years ago, he now moves with the confidence of someone who believes he is beyond the reach of the old rules. He wants a power that is feared and given whatever it wants. For this reason, some critics are no longer debating policy; they are discussing a change in the American regime. But a change to what?
“There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.” Jonathan Rauch answered the question in his now famous article. “Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing,” he wrote, “It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones.”
The Art of the Deal-Making Presidency
“Nice woman but she does not listen.”
After a reportedly tense phone call in early August, President Trump publicly criticized Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter with this condescending remark and quickly raised tariffs on Swiss imports to a punishing 39 percent. Couple of days later when two Swiss federal ministers and several government executives flew over to DC, but they got nowhere near Trump. Following months all the effort of traditional statecraft couldn’t resolved months of standoff. What ultimately break the deadlock was not diplomacy or policy talks. It was something shinier.
In early November, small delegation of Swiss titans -all male and, all billionaires- sidestepped the usual diplomatic channels, arriving at the Oval Office with a gold-plated Rolex desk clock and a 1-kilogram engraved gold bar. Before the guests had even leaved the White House, Trump shared a social media post announcing progress. Within the days, the previously urgent “national emergency” posed by Swiss trade deficit seemed to lose its urgency, and tariffs were trimmed to a comparatively modest 15 percent.
As that meeting so strikingly demonstrated, access to the American leader is no longer earned through shared values or sound policy. It is now won through the language of the deal and, above all, the weight of gold.
Trump received gold coated replica of a royal crown from the Silla Kingdom from South Korea President, a golden pager from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a gold-plated golf club from Japan, a golden boxing belt from Ukraine. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook presented Trump with a special glass disc on a 24-karat gold base in August 2025 and secured an exemption from 100% tariff on imported semiconductors. Apple gift was a favorite for Trump in the Oval Office until the Swiss came to town. “It was tough to beat Apple, but the Swiss did it,” one administration official told Axios.
Trump even kept original 24-karat gold Club World Cup Trophy for himself so FIFA had to give the winner team, Chelsea, a replica. Not only did he receive the trophy, but he was also awarded a gold medal, which FIFA presents to the players of the winning team.
“The golden age” that Trump promised in his second inaguration speech, has never seemed more literal. He wasn’t only for his trademark “Midas touch” flow, he seeks profit in every policy decision he makes. As Jonathan Rauch explained, in patrimonialism, every policy the president values is considered his own personal property. Some experts call it ‘pay-to-play,’ where foreign governments, businesses, and wealthy donors gaining political and financial advantages such as relaxed regulations and federal contracts by investing in the Trump Organization, supporting MAGA causes or by engaging in excessive flattery.
Trump Towers have been proposed from Damascus to Belgrade. Trump hotels or Trump Resorts are being built in many major cities around the world, primarily in Asia and Africa. As Amy Sorkin puts it Trump has made it clear that no gift is too much for him -even, and maybe especially, someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize medal.
Even presidential pardon power has become big business. In his first-year Trump has pardoned an unusually high numberof wealthy people accused of financial crimes, including money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud. Wealthy individuals pay millions to lobbying and consulting firms to bring their cases to Trump’s attention.
Trump pardoned cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao, months after Zhao’s company has struck a $2 billions deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s new crypto venture. In another revealing example, executives of Wells Fargo Bank, instead of paying the $8.5 million fine imposed for fraudulent transactions, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January, and two months later, their fine was reduced to a mere $150,000.
In Trump’s World, Europe Is the Villain
“The foreign policy of President Donald Trump combines the worst of isolationism with the worst of interventionism in a uniquely disastrous way,”says Thomas Reese. He began his presidency as a firm isolationist, but “America First” quickly turned into a wrecking ball -a license to upend America’s role in the world, discarding rules and norms with little restraint.
“I never thought I’d feel nostalgia for the Iraq War,” said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian, but it turns out that the runup to that war, when American Administration did at least strive to convince the Congress and the world of the righteousness of its cause, was the “good old days.” The US removed Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro based solely on national interest, bypassing all domestic, international authorization or public consent. Trump didn’t just break the rules it showed there aren’t any.
“No autocrat likes to see one of their own seized, shackled and renditioned,” wrote Adrian Blomfield in The Daily Telegraph. However, China and Russia are unlikely to be troubled by Maduro’s removal. They may see it as evidence of the US stepping back globally and focusing on regional dominance. A world divided into spheres of influence, where powerful states act freely, could benefit Moscow and Beijing, as noted by Gideon Rachman in the FT.
Even Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) plan within its 33-page framework argues that Russia and China are US peers or potential friends. Instead, it points the finger at a surprising villain: Europe. NSS argues that the real danger isn’t Russian tanks or Chinese factories, but rather the “erasure” of European culture caused by mass immigration and the power of the European Union bureaucracy. The liberal international order, already fragile, found itself mocked not only by adversaries but by its former custodian.
New Civil War and End of Forth Republic?
“Trump isn’t interested in fighting a new Cold War. He wants a new civilizational war,” wrote Thomas Friedman. Trump’s National Security Strategy language unlike any previous surveys, he observes, “It reveals a deep truth about this second Trump administration: how much it came to Washington to fight America’s third civil war, not to fight the West’s new cold war.” According to Friedman, after the Civil War of the 1860s and the second major civil struggle of the 1960s civil rights movement, America is now experiencing its third civil war. “This one, like the first two, is over the question ‘Whose country is this anyway?’ This civil war has been less violent than the first two—but it is early.”
Although the United States has operated under a single constitution, each civil war has produced a new political order, a new republic in all but name. For that reason, a “third civil war” would not just be another crisis; it would signal the end of what some analysts call the “Fourth American Republic.”
As Jamelle Bouie pointed, the Civil War and its aftermath constituted the Second Republic. The Third Republic came into this world through the overwhelming victory of the Democrats in the election of early 1930’s. The legacies of the Third Republic had lived on when the fourth republic began with the achievements of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, which included a newly open door to the world. “This was an American republic built on multiracial pluralism. A nation of natives and of immigrants from around the world. Of political parties that strove to represent a diverse cross-section of society,” wrote Bouie, “It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.”
A Year of Revelation
The first year of Trump’s second term offered Americans not greatness, but clarity. It showed what happens when empty and noisy demagogic rhetoric substitutes for vision and when power outruns principles. His return to power did not resolve the contradictions of Trumpism; it intensified them. Nationalism that depended on global markets. Capitalism claims to be self-regulating, yet in reality it is owned by the state. Law invoked as rhetoric and rejected as restraint. Freedom of speech demanded abroad and denied at home. Declared himself ‘Peace President’ and change the Department of the Defense name to Department of War.
His supporters too—with their enduring appetite for loud certainty over quiet competence, find themselves caught in a season of paradox. Cheering the dismantling of the very institutions that once established the order they now claim to want again. They back tariffs, immigration, and social spending policies that heavily impact rural America, the backbone of their movement. And most ironically, this coalition of white Christians is led by one of the least religious presidents ever.
And yet, for all the noise he and his administration generate, the first year of his second term also revealed limits. Courts still blocked some actions. States resisted others. Markets reacted unpredictably. Bureaucracies slowed what they could not stop. Polls indicate declining support for him as the Congressional elections approach. Trump raged against these constraints, calling them sabotage, yet their persistence revealed an uncomfortable truth: even an “unbound president” cannot easily escape the structure of a constitutional federal system.
Even in the face of repeated failures to “make America great again,” Trump succeeded at making one thing undeniably great again. It was not the greatness of law, restraint, economy, international leadership or wisdom, but the greatness of spectacle. A spectacle of American tragedy, one that may not have a happy ending this time.
(*) Cemal Tunçdemir is a New York–based veteran journalist with extensive experience covering US politics and international affairs.
In this ECPS interview, Professor Daniel Treisman examines how Trump’s political style intersects with the logic of informational autocracy and democratic backsliding. Drawing on “Informational Autocracy,” he argues that contemporary authoritarianism often relies less on mass repression than on “controlling narratives, selective coercion, and performance legitimacy.” Trump’s pressure on comedians, broadcasters, universities, and law firms, Professor Treisman suggests, reflects a familiar “inclination” toward intimidation—yet “the outcome was different,” because democratic institutions can still generate pushback. The core issue, he stresses, is whether US checks and civil society can withstand “executive aggrandizement”—the drive to “go beyond the formal or traditional powers of the office and consolidate control.”
In an era marked by democratic backsliding, populist leadership, and the reconfiguration of informational power, the resilience of liberal democracy has become a central concern for scholars and policymakers alike. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Daniel Treisman—Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research—offers a nuanced and empirically grounded assessment of how Donald Trump’s political strategy intersects with the logic of informational autocracy, executive aggrandizement, and democratic fragility.
Drawing on his influential work Informational Autocracy (co-authored with Sergei Guriev), Professor Treisman situates Trump’s threats against comedians, journalists, universities, and other institutional actors within a broader global pattern in which contemporary autocrats rely less on mass repression than on “controlling narratives, selective coercion, and performance legitimacy.” While Trump’s behavior often resembles that of informational autocrats, Professor Treisman emphasizes a crucial distinction: “So, while the inclination is similar, the outcome was different.” Episodes such as the pressure placed on late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel reveal Trump’s “tendency to expand his power and to overstep traditional limits,” but also the continued—if uneven—capacity of democratic institutions and civil society to push back.
At the core of the interview lies a central analytical question: whether Trump’s conduct represents a failed or incomplete attempt to translate informational autocracy into a still-competitive democratic system. As Professor Treisman puts it, “The real question… is how resilient democratic societies and civil societies in democratic settings can prove to be in response to a leader who seeks what is often called executive aggrandizement.” This concern animates Professor Treisman’s discussion of selective intimidation, signaling repression, and the targeting of elite institutions—strategies designed to “score some visible victories” and deter broader resistance without resorting to outright censorship.
The interview also explores how new media ecosystems and the rise of a tech “broligarchy” complicate classical models of informational control. Professor Treisman highlights the hybrid arrangements created by platform ownership, algorithmic amplification, and strategic alignment between populist leaders and tech elites, noting that these dynamics allow political actors to undermine epistemic authority “without overt censorship.” While Trump has aggressively pressured legacy media through litigation and regulatory threats, his relationship with major technology firms remains more transactional and indirect—distinct from the tightly coordinated media control characteristic of full informational autocracies.
Beyond the US case, Professor Treisman offers comparative insights into charismatic populism in Latin America, bureaucratized authoritarianism in Russia and Hungary, and the structural uncertainties surrounding democratic decline. Reflecting on Democracy by Mistake, he cautions against deterministic readings of democratic erosion, stressing that “mistakes can be forces for good” as well as for authoritarian empowerment. In closing, Professor Treisman urges analytical humility: distinguishing between cyclical stress and durable authoritarian transformation, he argues, remains inherently uncertain, as history “does not come with labels that are easy to read.”
Taken together, this interview provides a sober, theoretically informed reflection on Trumpism, informational power, and the fragile boundaries between democratic contestation and authoritarian drift.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Daniel Treisman, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Trump Has Shown Every Inclination of Informational Autocrats
US President Donald Trump held a campaign rally at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2024. Photo: Chip Somodevilla.[/caption]
Professor Daniel Treisman, thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In “Informational Autocracy,” you argue that contemporary autocrats rely less on overt repression and more on controlling narratives, selective coercion, and performance legitimacy. How should we analytically situate Trump’s recent threats against broadcasters and comedians within this framework—are we observing an attempted translation of informational autocracy into a still-competitive democratic setting?
Professor Daniel Treisman: It’s very interesting to think about the various tactics and approaches that Trump has used and to compare them with the kinds of practices we see in informational autocracies. Clearly, there are many parallels, and a great deal looks very familiar.
For instance, in the early 2000s in Russia, President Putin was offended by a comedy show that portrayed him in an unflattering light. It was a satirical program called Kukly. He made it apparent to the authorities at that station that the show had to be canceled, and it was indeed canceled.
You mentioned Trump and comedy in the US, and we know about the recent Jimmy Kimmel case. What is interesting is that, on the surface, the situation looks very similar. Trump was offended by jokes Kimmel had been telling on his show, and he made it clear to the owners of the station that he thought Kimmel should be canceled. The head of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) then put pressure on the channel.
The outcome, however, was different. Kimmel was taken off the air for a few days—about a week—and then reinstated. He returned very forcefully, speaking about freedom and the need for separation between government and television.
So, while the inclination is similar, the outcome was different. We often see in Trump a tendency to expand his power and to overstep traditional limits. The real question, for me, is how resilient democratic societies and civil societies in democratic settings can prove to be in response to a leader who seeks what is often called executive aggrandizement—going beyond the formal or traditional powers of the office and consolidating control in his own hands. This is precisely the process that characterizes democratic backsliding toward informational autocracy.
In that sense, this episode illustrates how Trump has shown every inclination to do the sorts of things that informational autocrats do, and if he were free to do so, I am sure he would move toward a more authoritarian or informationally autocratic setup. So far, however, we have seen a considerable degree of pushback and resilience on the part of American societal and democratic structures—through checks and balances and other mechanisms.
That said, it has been disappointing that we have not seen more resistance. The docility of Congress under Republican leadership and the questionable judgments of some courts have been troubling for those who view the White House’s attacks on the media, universities, and subnational governments as real threats to democracy. Those developments are certainly discouraging.
Nevertheless, across the board, we continue to see significant resistance, and that is what truly distinguishes full-fledged informational autocracies from developed democracies that manage to survive as democracies. It is not that democracies never produce populist politicians who want to push in an authoritarian direction—they do. These are politicians with authoritarian impulses, sometimes driven by narcissism or by a highly cynical political strategy. What ultimately varies is how far they are able to go.
Trump Is a Populist Proud of Defying Democratic Norms
Much of your work emphasizes that informational autocrats avoid crossing visible “red lines” that would trigger mass backlash. Does Trump’s increasingly explicit intimidation of the media suggest either miscalculation or a belief that democratic norms of speech protection have already eroded enough to absorb such shocks?
Professor Daniel Treisman: That’s a very good question, and it’s difficult to give a simple answer. I think there is sometimes an element of miscalculation. But let me step back for a moment—it’s not entirely clear that this is miscalculation, because we don’t fully understand what Trump’s strategy is.
In some ways, as I’ve said, he looks quite similar to various informational autocrats in authoritarian societies. But in other ways, he is quite different. As you noted, informational autocrats typically try not to appear overtly to be transgressing the rules of democracy. They present themselves as genuine, loyal democrats. They claim to follow constitutional procedures, often using legalistic language, and they frame their power grabs as legitimate exercises of authority for ostensibly valid purposes, such as protecting the public from pornography, terrorism, or similar threats.
The goal of genuine informational autocrats is not to challenge the system openly, but to create the impression that they are operating fully within democratic rules, while accusing their opponents of being undemocratic. They seek to project an image of competence, benevolence, and modernity, and to portray critics as those who threaten democracy.
There is an element of this in Trump’s behavior. He certainly accuses Democrats of being undemocratic. But there is also a distinct bravado—a deliberate defiance of democratic rules and norms. He openly states that when he pushes the Justice Department to investigate his critics and rivals, he is motivated by a desire for retribution. He rejects the idea of impartial justice and openly embraces the politicization of the justice system. In doing so, he often deliberately says things that are meant to provoke outrage and that are clearly undemocratic.
In this sense, he is not an authoritarian pretending to be a democrat. He is a populist politician who is, in some respects, openly proud of being undemocratic. He might argue that this is still democratic because his base supports him—and indeed, he does say that. But he also claims that there are no checks and balances, that the only constraint on him is his own morality, which amounts to a direct denial of the democratic system rather than a pretense of adherence to it.
So, it is difficult to determine whether this behavior reflects miscalculation or is simply part of his strategy, and whether he differs in this respect from informational autocrats. He appears to recognize that he is operating within a democratic system with a powerful civil society and has chosen to confront it directly and test its limits, rather than behaving like informational autocrats such as Orbán or early Putin, who presented themselves as ordinary democratic leaders supported by the majority while depicting their opponents as extremists seeking to undermine or overthrow democracy.
The Strategy Is to Score Visible Victories That Intimidate Others
Donald Trump delivers a victory speech after his big win in the Nevada caucus at Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, flanked by his sons Eric (right) and Donald Jr. (left) in Las Vegas, NV. Photo: oe Sohm.
Informational autocracies often rely on signaling repression—making examples rather than governing through mass coercion. How should we interpret Trump’s selective targeting of journalists, broadcasters, and universities in this light?
Professor Daniel Treisman: Well, it’s not just Trump, of course. This time he came in with a team that had thought carefully about how to attack various institutions in American society that they deeply opposed, including universities, law firms, some courts, and various subnational governments. The goal was quite directly to weaken those parts of what they viewed as a dominant political and cultural elite.
In part, yes, the strategy was to score some visible victories that would intimidate other members of a particular sector. So, you go after one university—like Columbia—very hard, essentially intimidating it into doing a deal, and then all the other universities would cave and negotiate individually with the Department of Education or the White House. There is an element here of signaling toughness, of attempting intimidation on a kind of wholesale scale.
That is quite similar to informational autocracies. There is less, as I mentioned earlier, of a concern with constraining actions to fit the appearance of democracy and normal democratic politics. Instead, there is a deliberate challenge—within the US context—to many of the legal underpinnings and long-standing understandings of the relationship between the presidency and other institutions, some of which have prevailed for decades or even centuries.
That said, this behavior is not entirely distinctive to authoritarian politics. All politicians try to signal their intentions by demonstrating, through particular cases, what their approach will be. What is distinctive here is that the goals of the Trump administration regarding universities and law firms have been very extreme. Essentially, they want greater control and a particular ideological orientation within universities, and they want to exclude intellectual approaches and philosophies they oppose.
With law firms, the aim is to discourage large, professional firms from opposing them or taking cases against them. That message was sent deliberately, through a barrage of attacks on different fronts very quickly during the first weeks and months of the administration, precisely in order to signal resolve and warn others.
So, in some respects, this does resemble informational autocracy. But it is also part of a broader phenomenon. Revolutionary politicians—or politicians seeking to implement fundamental changes—often come into office with a program and strike very hard at the outset to test how far they can go before resistance organizes and pushes back. Sometimes this is an effective strategy: if the initial blow is strong enough, opposition may fail to organize in time, allowing a new status quo to take hold.
Tech Billionaires Are Treated as Leverage Points
How does the rise of a tech “broligarchy”—with key digital venues controlled by figures such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos—complicate the classic logic of informational control? How do platform ownership, algorithmic governance, and strategic collaboration with populist leaders such as Donald Trump reshape the dynamics of informational autocracy? To what extent do these hybrid arrangements—combining formal pluralism with asymmetric visibility and amplification—enable populist actors to undermine epistemic authority and institutional trust without resorting to overt censorship?
Professor Daniel Treisman: That’s a great—and complicated—question. I think both informational autocracy and populism are closely tied to information and media. They tend to thrive in periods of technological change, when new media forms emerge.
In the early days of mass newspapers, for instance, that medium created new opportunities for populists to appeal to broader constituencies than had previously been mobilized in politics. We see something similar with the internet. As it became more developed and central to everyday life, it opened up new avenues for outsiders to engage in a different kind of politics. In democracies, this has been a major foundation of the recent populist wave.
In authoritarian contexts, similar opportunities have allowed authoritarian leaders to use the internet to communicate in new ways and to present themselves as democratic and competent through manipulation—much more effectively than old-style propaganda, which relied heavily on intimidation but was less successful in creating a convincing, all-encompassing political image. In this sense, new information technologies have reshaped not only perceptions of individual politicians but also broader understandings of the political system itself.
New information technology is therefore a central driver of the changes we are seeing in both democratic and authoritarian systems. In the American case, more specifically, the relationship between Trump and major technology firms—led by tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others—is complex.
Going into Trump’s second term, there was something of a meeting of the minds between Silicon Valley and the Trump team. Many in the tech sector felt that the industry—and tech billionaires personally—had been mistreated by the Biden administration, citing what they perceived as hostility, attempts to censor right-wing or libertarian views, overregulation, and even the debanking of entrepreneurs involved in new areas such as cryptocurrency. This generated real antagonism toward the Democrats among parts of Silicon Valley, aligning well with the attitudes and plans of the Trump camp.
This was particularly evident in the case of Elon Musk, who was effectively given carte blanche to move aggressively against the federal bureaucracy and dismantle large parts of the government in a short period of time. At the same time, there have also been tensions—if not open confrontations—between the Trump administration and some tech leaders. Still, many of them appear to perceive shared opportunities.
Although Musk is no longer in the administration and clearly disagrees with Trump on certain issues, such as fiscal policy, he—and many other tech billionaires—continue to see opportunities in the current political environment. Not all, of course; some remain aligned with the Democrats. But many hold libertarian views and see Trump as more receptive to their ideas about technological development, the treatment of billionaires, and the balance between regulation and freedom.
The Trump administration has also actively sought to influence the media environment, particularly legacy media, by pressuring the owners of major networks. In ways reminiscent of informational autocracies, Trump has relied on defamation suits, libel actions, and other legal tools to intimidate and pressure media organizations.
With social media, however, the approach has been more indirect. Trump created his own social network and has shown little interest in directly regulating platforms such as X or Facebook. Instead, he treats tech billionaires much like other wealthy actors—as leverage points. If he wants something, he applies pressure, and as long as his demands are not too costly, they tend to comply. There is little incentive for them to engage in open confrontation.
That said, this does not amount to the kind of comprehensive, day-to-day control characteristic of full informational autocracies, where authorities maintain close, behind-the-scenes relationships with most media outlets and allow only marginal opposition voices without real influence or mass reach.
In short, the parallel between Trump and informational autocrats in this domain—much like in others—is imperfect. Some features are strikingly reminiscent of informational autocracy, while others differ substantially. These differences reflect both contextual factors—such as the scale and global reach of US-based technology companies compared to media in smaller authoritarian states—and Trump’s own distinctive political style.
Caricature: Shutterstock.
Pluralism Survives, but the Playing Field Is Tilted
You and Sergei Guriev stress that modern autocrats seek to preserve the appearance of pluralism while hollowing it out. To what extent do Trump’s regulatory threats and litigation strategies resemble this logic of simulated legality rather than outright censorship?
Professor Daniel Treisman: I don’t think there is outright censorship. I don’t see outright censorship. It is much more a matter of trying to persuade—trying to send signals to the media to tone down criticism—or, as I mentioned, of confronting them with defamation suits or costly regulatory interference.
So, I think pluralism does exist; we do see pluralism in the United States. At the same time, there are constant efforts to tilt the playing field. Many of these efforts are not new. Republicans in the US political system have been doing this for a very long time—and not just Republicans; Democrats often use similar tools—to gain small, localized advantages, or sometimes larger ones, through practices such as gerrymandering or by refining voting laws in ways they believe will favor them.
All of that is, sadly, part of the American political tradition. Trump has often turbocharged this kind of behavior, as in the Texas mid-decade gerrymandering of congressional constituencies, but it is not radically new.
So, pluralism survives. There are efforts to win within a pluralist context, and there are also efforts to intimidate the opposition in this Trumpian, rather anarchic and blatant way. But I do not see real censorship or the kind of cohesive system we find in fully developed informational autocracies.
It is much more anarchic. Who knows how things will develop? Nobody can predict the future, but at present, it looks rather different to me.
Mistakes Are Easier to See in Retrospect
In“Democracy by Mistake,” you highlight how democracy often emerges—and collapses—not through design but through elite error. Looking at the US today, which elite misjudgments (judicial restraint, partisan polarization, media fragmentation) most plausibly explain the vulnerability of democratic guardrails?
Professor Daniel Treisman: In the US, we don’t really know. We don’t yet know whether what we are witnessing is an intense challenge to the democratic system—one that the forces of democracy will ultimately defeat—or whether we are observing a more gradual, long-term erosion in the quality of American democracy. For now, we have to reserve judgment.
Mistakes are much easier to identify in retrospect than as they are happening. One could argue that Trump has made many mistakes, and one could equally argue that leaders of democratic forces in the US have made many mistakes as well. Mistakes are universal and ubiquitous. Not all mistakes lead to the collapse of a regime—far from it.
For that reason, it is difficult to look at the US system and identify a single fateful mistake whose consequences we will clearly see five years from now. The main message of that article, for the current situation is this: we should not assume that everything is rational or part of a carefully crafted plan. Mistakes can be forces for good when they contribute to the failure of anti-democratic politicians and regimes. But mistakes can also be forces for harm when they enable or empower authoritarian actors.
Trump Fits the Family of Charismatic Populists
This editorial image, captured in Belgrade, Serbia, showcases an array of novelty socks featuring the likenesses of Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump in Belgrade, Serbia on December 12, 2024. Photo: Jerome Cid.
Comparatively, how should we distinguish Trump’s personalization of power from Latin American charismatic populism (e.g., Chávez) and from the more bureaucratized authoritarianism of leaders like Putin or Orbán?
Professor Daniel Treisman: Clearly, Trump isn’t very good at bureaucracy. There are some people in his administration who do bureaucracy well—Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, for example—and that is why they have had a greater impact on the federal bureaucracy than in Trump’s first term. But as an individual, Trump is clearly not a very systematic bureaucratic operator.
In that respect, he is more like charismatic populists. Putin does not have this kind of anarchic character, and Orbán is also much more systematic and skilled in statecraft and bureaucratic politics—although, of course, Orbán is also an effective populist and could be described by some as charismatic.
With regard to Chávez and other Latin American populists, Trump is obviously not quite like the left-wing populists of Latin America. Chávez had a revolutionary, Bolivarian discourse and a semi-Marxist worldview, and he maintained close emotional and political ties with other left-wing administrations across Latin America and Central America. That is quite different from Trump. Trump, after all, arrested the leader of the regime that evolved out of Chávez’s rule.
That said, there are right-wing populists in Latin America as well—Bolsonaro, for example—who are much more similar to Trump. Although Bolsonaro has more of a military background, in terms of personality and political approach Trump is closer to that type. Even when compared with left-wing populists like Chávez, Trump shares the fact that he is a populist who appeals—at least rhetorically, if not always through policy—to the masses of ordinary people whom he claims have been neglected and disrespected. That was also a central part of Chávez’s appeal.
So, I would say that Trump is distinctive in many ways, but he also clearly fits within the broader family of charismatic populists.
History Does Not Come with Labels
Finally, drawing on your work on predictability and early warning, which indicators should scholars prioritize to distinguish between episodic democratic stress and the onset of durable authoritarian transformation?
Professor Daniel Treisman: I should say at the outset that my work on predictability and prediction is quite limited, but I have been thinking about what is a philosophically deep question: the difference between trends and cycles. And I think the basic answer is that there is no definitive answer. You cannot know whether what appears to be changing at a particular moment represents a shift in the underlying trend—a breakpoint toward a new trajectory—or merely a cyclical fluctuation.
We see this across many spheres. If we look at the spread of democracy over the past 200 to 250 years—focusing here on the West, on Europe and the Americas—we observe both a very strong upward trajectory, from almost no democracies (depending, of course, on how one defines democracy) to a much larger number of countries that can be considered at least electoral democracies.
At the same time, we have seen waves: periods in which the share of democracies increases, followed by periods in which it declines or at least plateaus. In each of these moments of cyclical slowdown or reversal, people have proclaimed, “This is the end of democracy.” In every reverse wave, there has been fear that what we were witnessing was not just a cycle but a permanent shift away from democracy as a long-term reality. So far, those fears have been proven wrong in each case.
That said, I do not think there is any particular indicator or observational technique that can reliably tell us whether a change will be permanent or temporary. This reflects a deep feature of the world we live in and of our ability to understand history from within, rather than in retrospect. Looking backward, it is easy to apply statistical tests or analytical frameworks to determine whether a change was cyclical or represented a trend shift—it is almost trivial. But as history unfolds, I do not think there is any way to know for sure whether we are seeing something genuinely new or something that is repeating in a familiar pattern.
Different scholars have developed different mental models of the world, emphasizing one perspective or the other. Some believe in progress; others emphasize stagnation or endless repetition. This tension has run through Western philosophy and social science from the very beginning. My own position is to emphasize the high degree of uncertainty involved, and to push back against claims that we can clearly identify a change in the trend when it may well be a change in the cycle.
This is why I have written critically about responses to what some describe as a democratic recession, or even a reverse wave of democracy, in recent years. I think the evidence has not—or at least has not yet—fully supported such claims. There is growing evidence of a slowdown in the rate of democratic advance, and probably some degree of average backsliding. But there is an important distinction between backsliding and the long-term collapse of democracy.
So, we all need to remain attentive to this distinction and recognize that events, as they unfold, do not come with easily readable labels. We should have some respect for long-term trends, without assuming that they will automatically continue. There does seem to be a certain structural logic at work in many domains. The same is true of the stock market: there are both trends and cycles, and it is impossible to know on any given day whether a sharp drop is cyclical or part of a new trend. As we know, people have made—and lost—trillions of dollars betting on precisely that distinction.
In this ECPS interview, Professor Stephan Klingebiel argues that Trump-era populism signals a durable shift in global governance rather than a passing disruption. He stresses that the “rise of populism, nationalism, and right-wing populism predates Trump,” and warns that Washington is now “actively fighting all forms of multilateralism” through withdrawal, defunding, and the systematic contestation of UN language on issues such as “climate change,” “gender,” and “diversity.” Professor Klingebiel links this normative erosion to the weaponization of trade, tariffs, and development finance, which turns rules-based cooperation into coercive bargaining. He also highlights how geoeconomic competition is reshaping North–South relations by expanding bargaining space for resource-holding states. Looking ahead, he proposes a “global order minus one” as a pragmatic pathway to sustain multilateralism amid fragmentation.
In an era marked by intensified geopolitical rivalry, the resurgence of right-wing populism, and the erosion of long-standing international norms, the future of multilateral governance has become a central question for scholars and policymakers alike. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Stephan Klingebiel—Head of the Department of Inter- and Transnational Cooperation at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)—offers a sober and incisive assessment of how Trump-era populism is reshaping global governance and what realistic alternatives may still be available.
At the heart of Professor Klingebiel’s analysis is a rejection of the notion that Trump-era populism represents a temporary aberration. Instead, he situates it within a broader and more durable constellation of political, ideological, and technological shifts. As he emphasizes, “the rise of populism, nationalism, and right-wing populism predates Trump,” extending across parts of Europe and the Global South. Trump, in this sense, is not an anomaly but a catalyst—“a prominent role” within a system that is unlikely to disappear in the near future.
A central theme of the interview is the normative and material hollowing-out of multilateralism. Professor Klingebiel argues that populism does not merely weaken international cooperation through withdrawals and defunding; it reframes cooperation itself as a zero-sum loss. In Trump’s discourse, he notes, the United States is consistently portrayed as a victim: “Canada, Europe—[they] have long lived at the expense of the United States.” This logic underpins what Klingebiel bluntly describes as an administration that is “actively fighting all forms of multilateralism.”
The interview traces how this antagonism manifests across institutions and issue areas—from the US withdrawal from dozens of international organizations to the systematic erosion of consensus-based norms within the United Nations. Particularly alarming, Klingebiel warns, is Washington’s effort to excise concepts such as “climate change, gender, gender-based violence, and diversity” from multilateral language, producing a chilling effect that leaves international organizations “no longer in a position to be explicit about real global challenges.”
Beyond institutions, Professor Klingebiel examines the weaponization of trade, tariffs, supply chains, and development finance, describing a shift from rules-based governance to coercive bargaining. This marks, in his view, a decisive break with past practices, where even hegemonic power was at least nominally constrained by international law. Recent cases—such as US actions in Venezuela—signal a world in which legal justification is no longer even rhetorically necessary.
Yet the interview is not purely diagnostic. Looking ahead, Klingebiel introduces one of his most provocative ideas: the possibility of sustaining multilateralism through a “global order minus one.” If a broad coalition of states remains committed to multilateral norms, he argues, such an order could both isolate unilateral obstruction and create incentives for eventual re-engagement. While acknowledging that “we are most likely not going back to the situation we had five or ten years ago,” Klingebiel insists that political choices made now—particularly by Europe and like-minded partners—will decisively shape whether the future belongs to cooperative governance or competitive fragmentation.
Together, the interview offers a penetrating reflection on populism, power, and the fragile future of the international order.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Stephan Klingebiel, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Trump-Era Populism and Global Governance
Donald J. Trump, the 47th President of the United States, at his inauguration celebration in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2025. Photo: Muhammad Abdullah.
Professor Stephan Klingebiel, thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Is Trump-era populism best understood as a temporary disruption to global governance, or does it mark a structural shift toward a new “normal” defined by transactionalism and power asymmetries? What makes such a shift durable—or reversible?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: Thank you very much for this question. It is, of course, not an easy one, as it touches on many different dimensions. To begin with, I do not think that what we are currently witnessing is something that will simply disappear in the near future. The rise of populism, nationalism, and right-wing populism predates Trump. We saw these developments earlier in parts of Europe, such as Hungary, and also in several regions of the Global South.
What we are dealing with, then, is a broader system or constellation in which Trump plays a prominent role, but he is by no means the only actor. There are numerous other political figures, institutions, and ideological currents that are unlikely to vanish any time soon. As a result, this is a reality we will probably have to contend with for the foreseeable future.
These dynamics are also connected to wider structural trends. In some parts of the world, for instance, we see growing frustration among younger generations—this is particularly evident on the African continent. At the same time, the influence of traditional media is declining, while social media is gaining prominence. Social media, in turn, has the capacity to mobilize emotions in ways that differ significantly from earlier forms of political communication. From this perspective, it is important to recognize that the impact of social media is not a temporary phenomenon, but one that is likely to remain with us for some time.
The United States Is Actively Fighting All Forms of Multilateralism
How does populism erode multilateral cooperation not only materially (through withdrawal or underfunding) but also normatively, by reframing cooperation as loss rather than collective gain?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: I think we need to emphasize that, typically—and this is true for almost all populist leaders and movements—multilateral approaches are not really part of populist political identity or thinking. It is very much the opposite. As a populist leader, you emphasize national interest and present yourself as a victim. Just listening to many speeches by President Trump, including his most recent one in Davos, we see this clearly: he portrays the United States as a victim, arguing that the rest of the world—Canada, Europe—has long lived at the expense of the United States. The conclusion, of course, is that a populist leader then seeks to turn this around and make the rest of the world pay. In this narrative, the international system is framed as fundamentally unfair to the hegemon, to the United States. In that sense, the United States is actively fighting all forms of multilateralism.
We see this in many ways. The most visible manifestations are defunding and withdrawal from international organizations. At the beginning of January this year, President Trump announced that the US would withdraw from a total of 66 international organizations. We have also already seen the defunding of a number of other international institutions to which the United States was a part.
However, what I would stress is that there are many additional ways in which the US has, over the past months, weakened—and to some extent even undermined—multilateralism. One example is the International Conference on Development Finance held last summer in Sevilla, Spain. The United States remained involved in the preparatory process until the very last moment, largely in order to slow down and weaken the negotiations and to ensure that the final outcome document would be as weak as possible. At the very end, the United States announced that it would not participate in the conference at all. In that sense, it did not show up in Sevilla. What is particularly striking, however, is that the US had already been spoiling the process before the conference and then, immediately afterward, resumed efforts to weaken the outcome document, build alliances, and contest the results of the conference.
More broadly, we can see that the United States is pursuing a range of strategies. One additional point is that, from the very beginning of the second Trump administration—in February and March 2025—the US administration has been working with a list of key terms and concepts it actively seeks to oppose. These include concepts such as climate change, gender, gender-based violence, and diversity. As soon as an international organization publishes a report or document addressing climate change or any of these other issues, the United States attempts to eliminate this kind of language and thinking.
This is particularly dangerous because, in institutions such as the United Nations—where many decisions are consensus-based—we now face a situation in which, across executive boards and institutional bodies, the United States consistently intervenes to block or dilute agreed language. For example, it seeks to replace “climate change” with terms like “extreme weather.” This practice is already shaping the internal thinking and behavior of international organizations. Increasingly, they are no longer in a position to speak openly about major global challenges. Instead, they try to avoid explicit language in order to escape constant confrontation with the United States. At the same time, the United States is actively seeking allies to challenge what was previously a broad global consensus, further eroding the normative foundations of multilateral cooperation.
We Are Entering an Era of Competing Organizations and Conflicting Norms
The headquarters of the United Nations in New York City. Photo: Dreamstime.
Are we witnessing the end of universal multilateralism, or its mutation into selective, interest-based cooperation? How does your concept of like-minded internationalism fit into this transition?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: It is probably too early to draw definitive conclusions about what kind of new era, we are entering. Much of this is still evolving. What is clear, however, is that there are very powerful forces actively trying to undermine the existing international order, most notably the United Nations. Even in the past, we saw situations in which certain actors—Russia, for example—did not accept international law in many respects, and similar patterns could be observed with other governments as well.
The key difference today, however, is that we previously had a very strong group of countries, including the United States, committed to ensuring that this international order functioned effectively. What we see now is that the United States itself is aligning with forces that are seeking to undermine—and in some cases even dismantle—this system.
Just a few days ago, President Trump publicly described the United Nations as an enemy. From this perspective, it is not difficult to understand that any international order in which the United States does not occupy a clearly dominant position is framed as contrary to American interests. The proposal of a so-called “peace council” by President Trump represents an open challenge to the United Nations. My assumption is that even if this initiative ultimately fails, and even if Trump is no longer president, the broader trend toward competing international organizations, rival groupings, and conflicting norms about the rules of the game will persist.
This brings us to the question of like-minded internationalism. On the one hand, a populist leader can seek out like-minded countries, as President Trump is doing. On the other hand, states that remain committed to multilateralism can also pursue cooperation among like-minded partners. This is something we can already observe. If you look at recent speeches in Davos—by leaders from Canada, France, and several other countries—you can see attempts to articulate collective action against the advance of right-wing populism.
At the same time, such efforts require substantial power backing to be effective. While we can see early signs of countries trying to organize this kind of counterpower, it remains a very difficult and uncertain undertaking.
We Are Seeing the Construction of a System Based on Coercive Power
Trump’s use of tariffs and trade threats as coercive tools, or as a “trade bazooka,” reflects a shift from rules-based trade to punitive bargaining. What are the long-term systemic risks of normalizing trade as a geopolitical weapon?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: We can now observe this dynamic across many policy areas. It relates to trade and tariffs, but also to foreign investment, access to critical minerals, and other domains. What is particularly new is the extent to which Trump is explicitly weaponizing all of these tools—imposing, or threatening to impose, tariffs whenever a country is deemed, from his perspective, not to be behaving in a desirable way.
One positive feature of the past was that, to a large extent, different policy areas were kept separate. If there was a conflict related to trade, it was addressed through trade instruments and negotiation. Today, this separation has largely disappeared. From a European perspective, we increasingly see that almost everything can be linked to questions about US support and positioning—for example, in relation to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine—even when the issues at stake are, in principle, unrelated.
We have seen statements suggesting that if the European Union seeks to regulate US technology companies, this could have consequences for NATO. In reality, these issues are not directly connected, but this administration is deliberately trying to weaponize all the tools at its disposal. Tariffs, in particular, appear to be one of the most immediate and effective instruments Trump can use to respond to a situation. This is deeply concerning. It signals the construction of a system based on coercive power, rather than leadership through partnership. It is no longer about win-win outcomes or cooperation, but about imposing outcomes that align with what the US leadership wants to see.
As a brief aside—and this applies to many of the points I have made—this situation strongly reflects what European countries are currently experiencing, and it is highly relevant for them. At the same time, it is important to recognize that, from the perspective of many countries and actors in the Global South, such coercion and dominance—whether by the United States or by the West more broadly—is not new. These practices have long been part of their political reality.
From a European standpoint, the liberal international order now appears to be at serious risk, and this concern is entirely justified. Yet for many countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, or Africa, experiences such as military intervention are not unprecedented. In conversations I have had over recent weeks and months, academics, political leaders, and policymakers from these regions often say: this is our normal experience as relatively small and powerless countries. US-led military interventions, particularly in Latin America over past decades, are a familiar reference point. This perspective deserves to be taken seriously.
There is also an important additional dimension. In many respects, there is truth in the argument that the international system has never been fair to large parts of the world. What is new today is that Europe and other Western countries are now feeling the impact directly, because these same coercive tools are increasingly being used against them. Yet there remains a crucial difference compared to the past. Historically, the US government—and Western governments more broadly—at least operated with a set of double standards. There were formal commitments to principles such as territorial integrity and sovereignty, and when military interventions occurred, they were typically accompanied by some form of justification grounded in international law.
If we look at events such as what happened in Venezuela in early January 2026, it was clear from the outset that there was no attempt by the US administration to justify its actions on the basis of international law. This marks a significant departure from earlier practices. In the past, Western actors were at least under pressure to frame their actions within legal justifications. Today, the United States no longer appears interested in invoking international law even as a reference point. In this sense as well, we are confronting a new situation.
Geoeconomics Has Become a Very Crucial Dimension
How does the weaponization of trade, supply chains, and development finance reshape North–South relations, particularly for countries dependent on access to Western markets and institutions?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: I think what we have already seen over the last couple of years—and this is only partly related to the second administration of President Trump, as we observed it especially during the COVID period and even before—is that we are now in a situation where supply chains, access to critical minerals, and energy security have become much more important. Geoeconomics has therefore become a very crucial dimension.
In many ways, this increasingly gives even poorer, or very poor, countries a relatively powerful bargaining instrument. Just look, for example, at the situation of a number of Sahel countries, which are now in a position to offer what they have—whether in terms of international support in United Nations General Assembly decisions or access to minerals such as uranium and other resources—to different actors: European countries, the United States, but also China and Russia, particularly when it comes to uranium.
This gives many relatively small or economically less important countries much more power at their own disposal. And this kind of multi-alignment is something that, from this perspective, is seen by many actors in the Global South—on the African continent and beyond—as a positive trend.
Greenland — Seeing Territorial Integrity Questioned Is Deeply Troubling
Colorful houses in Greenland. Photo: Dreamstime.
How should we interpret Trump’s renewed rhetoric and pressure around Greenland—symbolically and strategically? Does this signal a revival of territorial or quasi-imperial logics under populist leadership?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: This is really—especially from a European perspective—a game changer. I think what we constantly see with the Trump administration is the need to make sense of what is actually going on. There is so much happening at the same time. Some of these activities may be relevant, while others appear to be mere rhetoric or deliberate distractions. At the beginning of his second term, or even before, Trump was already using narratives about Canada, the Panama Canal, and Greenland.
Many observers initially had the impression that this was little more than window dressing—aimed at domestic audiences rather than reflecting serious intentions. However, seeing these intentions articulated so explicitly—we want to take over Greenland—and accompanied by statements that the United States would be willing to use force or military power, including reiterations of this position in Davos and elsewhere, marks a clear escalation. Announcing, over a prolonged period, that the use of military power is not excluded represents a direct challenge to international law.
This is a genuinely new dimension, and it brings us back to an era when imperial ambitions were an accepted part of international politics. From the perspective of European countries, many countries in the Global South, and the normative framework of international law, there has long been a shared hope that the territorial integrity of states would remain a foundational principle of global order. Seeing this principle openly questioned by the world’s most powerful military actor is deeply troubling.
We are therefore at a turning point, and we are still grappling with what effective responses to this new situation might look like. At the same time, this rhetoric constitutes a real threat emanating from the administration. Over the past few weeks, we have seen at least some renewed movement toward European unity. It is also important to recognize that Europe—the European Union (EU) together with the UK, and other partners—as well as countries in the Global South, are not merely in a position to wait and observe. They also have the capacity to respond.
The United States itself depends heavily on the rest of the world—for trade, access to critical minerals, and political support, among other things. In this sense, the debate around Greenland is indeed a game changer. It is likely to shape strategic concepts and political priorities for years to come.
We Can Oppose Attempts to Establish a System of Hemispheres
In a fragmented, multipolar order, are spheres-of-influence politics becoming inevitable again? For smaller and middle powers, does this create new room for maneuver—or deepen structural dependency?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: I think this is very much a concept associated with President Putin in Russia, and it seems to have been taken up by President Trump as well. If you look at the National Security Strategy from early December 2025, it reflects, more or less, exactly this kind of thinking—how the world should be organized by large powers such as the United States. In this view, regions are defined in which major powers exercise special influence, with the United States claiming its own hemisphere, understood as the Western Hemisphere.
Whether this will ultimately become the dominant way in which the world is organized remains to be seen. At the very least, however, we can observe a real risk that this kind of concept may become attractive to a number of countries.
At the same time, we need to recognize that the imperial era—when colonial powers simply ruled over other countries and territories—is quite different from today’s reality, characterized by a very different global economy. In many parts of the world, there is now an alternative understanding of how the international order should be organized. We also see significant economic and military potential in Europe and elsewhere.
So, in a sense, this intention—we want to rule our own hemisphere—is clearly present. But whether it will actually define the future organization of the international system is still uncertain. Importantly, this is also a moment in which many actors and countries are trying to push back against such ideas. European actors, for example—the European Union and the UK—have the potential to link up with partners in the Global South who are not in a weak position in many respects. So we can oppose those intentions and approaches that seek to establish a system of hemispheres.
Europe Needs the Capacity to React Within Days or Even Hour
European Commission headquarters with waving EU flags in Brussels. Photo: Viorel Dudau.
What realistic policy alternatives exist to prevent a spiral of authoritarianism, protectionism, and institutional decay? If you had to prioritize three concrete steps for Europe, what would they be?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: I think one main challenge we need to overcome is organizing collective action. Collective action, as we know, is often difficult to organize because, within one group, there are different views and different interests. Just look at the tariff threats from the US over the past weeks and months. We saw a situation in which, for example, the interests of France, Germany, and other EU countries diverged, making it difficult to arrive at a clear, unified position.
But this is not impossible. With the Greenland escalation over the last few weeks, we saw that collective action can indeed be achieved. So, organizing collective action is crucial. A second point is that collective action among a like-minded group is a requirement—a precondition—for success. At the same time, we also need to recognize that, in certain moments, a smaller group of actors may need to provide leadership, particularly in shaping concepts and strategies.
It is also useful to consider one advantage President Trump has: as the leader in power, he can decide overnight what he wants to do. For the European Union, it is far more difficult to speak with one voice within a very limited timeframe. What this means is that Europe needs to develop the capacity to react within short periods—within days or even hours.
This kind of leadership by some European countries—without neglecting the views and interests of smaller EU members or other actors—should ensure that there is a capable, small group in a position to respond quickly. Like-mindedness is one requirement, but it must also translate into an approach that is agile in many ways: agile in terms of speed, and agile in terms of producing solutions that are ready to confront new challenges, such as political leaders openly stating their intention to take over another country.
In this regard, I think it requires a strong willingness to mobilize political, economic, and military resources, and the capacity to make decisions swiftly. These are some of my responses to your question.
A Global Order Minus One Could Become a Powerful Incentive
And finally, Professor Klingebiel, looking ahead, do you foresee a reconstitution of multilateralism, a stable equilibrium of fragmented governance, or a drift toward competitive blocs—and what political choices today will be decisive in shaping that outcome?
Professor Stephan Klingebiel: It is difficult to make any serious forecast at this point about how the world might look. However, what we have seen over the last couple of weeks is a growing discussion suggesting that we should consider—perhaps even actively push for—a global order that could be described as a “global order minus one.” This would mean that if there is a broad consensus among countries that want to uphold a multilateral approach, that want to keep the United Nations relevant—or even make it more relevant—while the United States takes a different position, it might still be possible to sustain a strong and effective form of multilateralism.
In such a scenario, we would be in a position to isolate, in many ways, what the United States is doing. Even from a conceptual perspective, this kind of global order minus one could become a powerful tool to incentivize the United States to rejoin the international consensus. If the United States were the only major player outside such an order, this would entail significant political and economic costs, as well as increased military risks for the United States itself.
What I want to emphasize is that we are most likely not returning to the situation we had five or ten years ago. Instead, we may be moving toward a different configuration in which global governance needs to be reformed in many ways—not least to incorporate rising actors from the Global South and to make the system fairer overall—but where this new arrangement could also generate substantial pressure on the United States to re-engage.
This perspective is also relevant when considering other actors that are not particularly committed to multilateralism, such as Russia. When it comes to China, the picture is somewhat different, but in all these cases, alignment remains necessary in various ways. A global order minus one may thus represent one possible pathway for navigating and potentially overcoming the difficult situation we currently face.
Giving an interview to the ECPS, Professor Francisco Rodríguez argues that today “Venezuela is no longer about Venezuela; it is about demonstrating power.” He reassesses Chavismo’s constitutional refoundation, noting that “not even the most hardline opponents of Chavismo question the Constitution today,” while stressing that redistribution collapsed when oil rents vanished: “The model of oil-rent redistribution simply does not work if there are no rents to distribute.” Professor Rodríguez highlights the durability of moral antagonism—“us versus them”—and shows how social policy can operate as rule: “We bring you food; we take care of your family’s needs.” Crucially, he links the post-Maduro landscape to Delcy Rodríguez’s room for maneuver, arguing that if she can claim Washington is no longer backing the opposition, she can frame Maduro’s seizure as “a strategic victory.” Yet he warns that US demands for “power-sharing with the opposition” would be “deeply problematic for Chavismo.” He concludes that Trump’s approach is transactional: “not demanding political reform… [but] asking Venezuela to sell oil.”
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Francisco Rodríguez—Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Faculty Affiliate at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies—offers a comprehensive analysis of Venezuela’s post-Maduro political trajectory. Situating the case at the intersection of populist state resilience, authoritarian adaptation, and shifting US power strategies, Professor Rodríguez advances a stark diagnosis: “Venezuela is no longer about Venezuela; it is about demonstrating power.” In his account, the country has become a geopolitical signal—a site through which coercive capacity, transactional hegemony, and the limits of democratic opposition are being tested.
Professor Rodríguez begins by reassessing the foundational pillars of the Chávez-era project—constitutional refoundation, oil-rent redistribution, and the moralization of politics—arguing that these were not merely leader-centered strategies but elements of a durable populist state architecture capable of surviving leadership decapitation. While personally critical of the 1999 Constitution, he notes that “not even the most hardline opponents of Chavismo question the Constitution today,” underscoring how deeply constitutional refoundation has been absorbed into Venezuela’s political ethos. Even critics, he observes, now invoke the Constitution “as a model that the Maduro government is failing to uphold.”
On political economy, Professor Rodríguez emphasizes that populist redistribution depends on material abundance. “The model of oil-rent redistribution simply does not work if there are no rents to distribute,” he argues, pointing to a 93 percent collapse in oil revenues between 2012 and 2020. This collapse, compounded by US sanctions, forced the regime toward pragmatic—and even neoliberal—adjustments, not as a matter of ideological conversion but constraint. As Professor Rodríguez puts it, the economy remained closed “not because the government didn’t want it open, but because the United States government didn’t allow it.”
A central theme throughout the interview is the durability of moralized politics. Chavismo’s framing of politics as an existential struggle between “the people” and apátridas (stateless persons in Spanish/Portuguese, S.C) continues to structure both regime and opposition behavior. Professor Rodríguez cautions that this antagonistic grammar cannot be easily abandoned, particularly because “the opposition has also embraced a moralized framework, albeit from the opposite angle.” This mutual entrenchment helps explain why moments that might have enabled institutional cohabitation—most notably the opposition’s 2015 parliamentary victory—instead produced escalation and breakdown.
Within this transformed landscape, Professor Rodríguez devotes particular attention to Delcy Rodríguez’s room for maneuver. He argues that her political viability now hinges on whether she can credibly claim that Washington is no longer backing the opposition. Under those conditions, Maduro’s seizure can be reframed as “a strategic victory,” preserving Chavismo’s narrative of confrontation. At the same time, Professor Rodríguez warns that any US demand for “power-sharing with the opposition” would be “deeply problematic for Chavismo,” requiring a fundamental rewriting of its moral and institutional grammar.
The interview culminates in Professor Rodríguez’s assessment of US intervention under Donald Trump. Contrary to expectations, Trump did not demand democratization or power transfer, but oil. “What Trump is effectively doing now is not demanding political reform,” Professor Rodríguez explains; “he is asking Venezuela to sell oil to the United States.” This approach reflects a broader logic of informal empire: “It is more efficient to rule through domestic elites who follow US directives than to administer the country directly.” In this sense, Venezuela becomes less a national case than a global message—one that signals the new rules of transactional power, and the risks they pose for democratic oppositions worldwide.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Francisco Rodríguez, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Between ‘Us Versus Them’ and External Power: Chavismo After Maduro
Iconic sites in central Caracas, where buildings are decorated with murals promoted by the Chávez and Maduro governments. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Francisco Rodríguez, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start with the first question: With Nicolás Maduro removed yet the Chavista state apparatus largely intact, how should we reinterpret the foundational choices of the Chávez era—constitutional refoundation, oil-rent redistribution, and the moralization of politics—as elements of a populist state project capable of surviving leadership decapitation?
Professor Francisco Rodríguez: First of all, thank you very much for having me, and thank you for the opportunity to have a conversation about Venezuela and its populist model and evolution. Let me start by addressing the three aspects you mention. One of them is the Constitution. To a certain extent, constitutional refoundation is something Chavismo achieved quite remarkably, and it has become deeply ingrained in the Venezuelan ethos. The evidence for this is that there is very little, if any, discussion among Venezuela’s political actors about the need to change the Constitution. This is not to say that I think the current Constitution is good. On the contrary, I am quite critical of the way it expands executive power, and I believe that reform in this area will be necessary. But the reality is that not even the most hardline opponents of Chavismo question the Constitution today. In fact, they often invoke it as a model that the Maduro government is failing to uphold.
Turning to the other two points you raised—moralization of politics and oil rents—I think what we have seen over the past few years, roughly over the past decade, is that the model of oil-rent redistribution simply does not work if there are no rents to distribute. In Venezuela, those rents effectively disappeared. Oil revenues declined by 93 percent between 2012 and 2020. They have recovered somewhat since then, but they remain around 75 percent lower than their peak in 2012. As a result, the government has far fewer resources to redistribute, and, to some extent, it has already been forced to move toward a neoliberal policy paradigm. The main reason it has not gone further in that direction is that the economy has been under sanctions, which has prevented the implementation of some basic elements of the neoliberal model, such as opening the economy to foreign investment. This closure was not due to a lack of willingness on the government’s part, but rather because the United States government did not allow it.
Moralized Politics, External Pressure, and Strategic Uncertainty
This brings us to the third point: the demoralization of politics. This is something Chavismo will have to grapple with and much depends on how the current intervention evolves. Chavismo’s narrative has long been one of moralization—of us versus them—casting its opponents as apátridas, people without a sense of the fatherland. This narrative was effective over the past decade, during a period of open confrontation with the United States. But what has happened now is that the US has prevailed, in the sense that it has imposed its power on Venezuela and compelled Venezuelan authorities to react according to its dictates. Venezuelan authorities are therefore no longer acting autonomously. How do they sustain this narrative under these conditions? In the two weeks since Maduro’s seizure, they have been playing a dual game: complying with US demands while simultaneously maintaining the narrative that Maduro has been kidnapped and must be returned. In this way, they can still preserve the idea of confrontation.
The problem—and we will probably return to this later—is that this confrontation has its own dynamics. It is not something Chavismo can easily abandon, because the opposition has also embraced a moralized framework, albeit from the opposite angle: an “us versus them” discourse that pits the good against the bad, or decent society against a corrupt criminal mafia. This is not a narrative that can be changed at will. Yet if, for example, as a White House spokesperson suggested —and as President Trump has hinted—a White House visit by Delcy Rodríguez is being contemplated, it will become very difficult to sustain that confrontational narrative.
This leads to the final question: is there a way for Chavismo to continue evolving, and what will its core narrative be? Is this a strategic retreat—a case of “we have to do this to defend the project”? Or does it mean abandoning some of the project’s foundational tenets altogether?
It Is Too Early to Tell Whether Adaptation Will Become Strategy
Late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attended the ceremony marking the laying of the foundation stone for a monument to Simón Bolívar in Moscow, Russia on October 15, 2010. Photo: Dreamstime.[/caption]
In your work, you highlight how Chavismo constructed politics as a moral antagonism between “the people” and existential enemies. After Maduro’s seizure, does this moralized populist logic appear less as a contingent discursive strategy and more as a durable institutional grammar that shaped courts, security forces, and rent allocation?
Professor Francisco Rodríguez: I am tempted to respond as Zhou Enlai is said to have responded to a question about the French Revolution: it is too early to tell. It later emerged that the question was lost in translation and was actually about the May ’68 revolts, but the answer certainly applies here as well. What we are seeing now is very short-term adaptation to external circumstances, which, depending on how events unfold, may later be interpreted as strategic. Let me illustrate this with the example of Chávez after the 2002 coup.
After returning to power following the 2002 coup, Chávez adopted a very conciliatory tone. He even asked for forgiveness for his previous attitude, acknowledging that he should not have fired the PDVSA (Venezuela’s state oil company) managers in the manner he did—an episode widely perceived as humiliating, or at least framed that way by Chávez himself. Crucially, at that moment he also acceded to the main demand of economic elites: changing the economic cabinet. He brought in a group of pragmatists to run the economy, and they remained in place for about a year. One year later, however, Jorge Giordani—Chávez’s chief architect and ideologue—was back in charge of economic policy.
Some interpret this episode as Chávez merely playing along, and there is certainly some truth to that. But there is also another dimension, linked to the enduring dynamics of confrontation. That economic cabinet survived through the general strike and the oil strike against Chávez and was only replaced once Chávez concluded that he was back in confrontation mode—that the opposition was again trying to overthrow him—and that he therefore needed a command economy capable of asserting control over oil resources. This entailed abandoning efforts to accommodate the private sector. If we look back at that moment, Chávez imposed exchange controls in January 2003 during the oil strike, but crucially, he did not lift them once the strike ended. In effect, he shifted from a strategy of trying to bring the private sector into a governing coalition and broadening his base of support to one centered on confrontation: controlling oil rents and disciplining the private sector through control of those rents and access to foreign exchange.
Trump Is Not Demanding Reform—He Is Asking for Oil
One of the key uncertainties today is how the United States will proceed. US policy will shape many of the constraints facing Venezuela. If the US were to station warships off Venezuela’s coast and dictate terms, Venezuela would have little room to maneuver. But this is a somewhat unusual version of coercion coming from the Trump administration. President Trump’s first administration was the one that stopped buying oil from Venezuela. What Trump is effectively doing now is not demanding political reform, elections, or the transfer of power to María Corina Machado. Instead, he is asking Venezuela to sell oil to the United States—something Venezuelan authorities had long been asking Trump to permit. This is not a demand that makes the Delcy Rodríguez regime uncomfortable.
To the extent that Venezuelan authorities can establish a working relationship with the Trump administration, and as long as Washington maintains this stance, the moral and institutional grammar you describe is likely to persist. This episode can easily be framed as yet another chapter in the “us versus them” struggle. It is important to recall that Chavismo’s confrontation has never primarily been with the United States, but rather with the domestic opposition and economic elites. If Delcy Rodríguez can credibly claim that Venezuela has won US support and that Washington is no longer backing the opposition, she can present this as a strategic victory. She does not need to deny that Maduro’s capture was problematic; she only needs to frame it as having defeated the opposition on that front.
Under those conditions, the discourse of confrontation would be preserved and would continue to be embedded in Venezuelan institutions. The real difficulty would arise if the US were to change course and demand power-sharing with the opposition. That scenario would be deeply problematic for Chavismo. While it might still be manageable, it would be extraordinarily difficult to justify to supporters. It would be just as challenging for Delcy Rodríguez as for María Corina Machado to explain why they should cooperate, why they should sit at the same table. Such a shift would require a profound rewriting of the moral narrative and the institutional grammar that accompanies it, because any genuine power-sharing arrangement would have to extend into the institutions themselves. That would represent a fundamentally different political game from the one Chavismo has played over the past quarter century.
Venezuelan opposition leader and ousted lawmaker María Corina Machado during a street protest movement of civil insurrection against the government of Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, 2017. Photo: Edgloris Marys.
The Difference Between Chávez and Maduro Is Abundance, Not Personality
From a populism studies perspective; to what extent did Chavismo succeed in transforming a charismatic, plebiscitary project into a post-charismatic regime—one in which moral legitimacy, clientelism, and coercion became routinized within the state itself?
Professor Francisco Rodríguez: That’s a great question. It is tempting to focus on the contrasting personalities of Chávez and Maduro, but I would place much greater emphasis on material and economic constraints. Chávez governed during an era of abundance. When he came to power, Venezuelan oil was selling for about $9 a barrel; by the time he died, it was selling for more than $100.
Those rents later collapsed for two main reasons. The first was the sharp decline in oil prices between 2014 and 2016. The second was the political crisis triggered by that collapse, which led, among other things, to US economic sanctions. This raises an unavoidable counterfactual question—one that is necessarily subjective: how would Chávez have reacted to the complete erosion of rents? Would he have behaved differently from Maduro? My view is that he probably would not have.
Had Chávez found himself unable to win elections and facing both a hostile domestic opposition and a US government effectively seeking his removal, I believe he would have become just as repressive as Maduro. There is little in Chávez’s governing style to suggest otherwise. We need only recall the period leading up to the 2004 recall referendum, when Chávez used the Maisanta list to regulate access to public employment in a highly clientelist manner—shoring up support before the vote and intimidating not so much committed opposition voters as potentially neutral citizens and public employees who might have contemplated opposing him. In that sense, similar dynamics would likely have prevailed under Chávez.
That said, as an economist, I am not best equipped—nor is my discipline particularly well suited—to analyze questions of popular or leader charisma. What I can say is that Chávez’s association with a period of prosperity, driven by oil rents and reflected in improvements in living conditions and social indicators through expansive social spending, would likely have made the ensuing crisis resemble Cuba’s “Special Period.” The enduring memory of better times, and of restored dignity and living standards for many of the poor, might have been sufficient to sustain Chávez’s support—something Maduro has been unable to claim.
Chavismo Was Surprised by the Scale of Its Own Electoral Defeat
This contrast is still evident in public opinion today: Chávez remains widely popular, while Maduro does not. As a result, Maduro has relied far more heavily on coercion and institutional control, a tendency that reached an extreme in the 2024 elections, when the government concluded that it had no option but to brazenly steal the vote. Ironically, the fact that Maduro resorted to fraud suggests that he believed victory was still possible. This episode marked a moment when Chavismo was genuinely surprised by the depth of its loss of popular support.
It is important to stress, however, that this surprise did not stem from ignorance of opinion polls or a failure to monitor public sentiment. Careful readings of polling data suggested the election would be relatively close. Nor was it due to an inability to track electoral performance in real time; the government possesses a fairly robust system for doing so, which led it to believe it had mobilized roughly five million votes—enough to make the contest tight even under the opposition’s most favorable assumptions.
What Chavismo was not prepared for was the possibility that, of those five million mobilized voters, around one million would ultimately vote not for Maduro but for Edmundo González. In that moment, the very structures the regime had built revealed their limits. Returning to your question, this suggests that mechanisms of coercion were not fully routinized. They had been routinized for a long period during which they functioned effectively, as evidenced in 2021, when the opposition participated in elections, European Union observers were present, and the government swept the regional contests. At that time, the clientelist model worked.
By 2024, however, something had shifted. That structural break is precisely what the model—one that had kept Maduro in power for twelve years—is now struggling to confront.
CLAPs, Causality, and the Mechanics of Populist Rule
Given that Chávez-era distributive systems continue to function after Maduro’s removal, how should we reassess social policy not merely as welfare provision but as a populist technology of rule—and what does your work on targeted benefits tell us about how redistribution becomes a mechanism of political loyalty under authoritarian populism?
Professor Francisco Rodríguez: I think it is important for me to explain briefly what my work does and what it does not do. This relates, in part, to the broader conversation between economics and the social sciences and to what economists typically try to accomplish. We generally aim to identify causal effects. In my World Development paper on how clientelism works, I use a natural experiment—the repetition of elections in the Venezuelan state of Barinas—to evaluate how social transfers respond to elections. More specifically, I examine the effect of electoral competitiveness on social transfers.
To do so, I use the government’s food package distribution system—the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAPs). What I find is quite interesting. When this natural experiment is used to identify causal effects, the results show that, as a consequence of the election, social benefits were targeted more toward median voters—those located in the middle of the political spectrum. This has important implications for the standard narrative on populism. Much of the literature assumes that government supporters are more likely to receive social benefits. That is true as a correlation, as a descriptive statistic, and that point is undeniable. But descriptive statistics are not the same as causal effects. This pattern may exist because the government is actively targeting its followers, but it may also exist because supporters are more likely to self-select into these programs.
It is easy to find anecdotal evidence of opposition supporters saying, “I’m not going to take a food package from the government; I’m not going to give them my information, because that allows them to control me. I don’t like that food; I think it’s poor-quality or even dangerous.” This behavior must be disentangled from other causal factors, such as income differences. Pro-opposition supporters tend to have higher incomes and can therefore more easily opt out of these programs. That disentangling is precisely what the causal experiment helps to achieve.
Between Welfare and Control
So, it is one thing to say that the government uses these programs electorally to target median voters, which is what my paper demonstrates. But it is also important to recognize that, descriptively, government supporters still tend to be the main beneficiaries of these programs. Another key finding in the data is that when people are asked, “Why are you getting CLAP boxes?” or “Why are you not getting CLAP boxes?”, the overwhelming majority respond, “I’m getting them because I registered,” or “I’m not getting them because I didn’t register.” Very few respondents—less than 10 percent—say, “I’m getting them because I support the government,” or “because I have friends in the government,” or “I’m not getting them because I’m not on the government’s side.”
This means that the system is politically targeted, but not necessarily in the way it is often assumed. As a result, voters’ reactions to it are also quite different from what is commonly presumed. In many respects, it appears as the state doing what it is expected to do: delivering food to people and to families. In another paper that I am about to publish in a collection with the Inter-American Development Bank, we estimate the calorie effect of the CLAP program and find it to be substantial—around 500 calories per person. In the context of a massive economic collapse, that can make the difference between famine and the avoidance of famine.
What we are seeing, then, diverges in important ways from standard assumptions. There are, of course, other mechanisms of control. The Carnet de la Patria, for example, operates much more in the classic quid pro quo clientelist manner: if you support me, you receive a monetary transfer. The government uses cash in this way, and it is often considered legitimate for it to do so. As Maduro once explicitly stated during a campaign speech, “This is dando y dando—you give, I give.” He was referring not to CLAP boxes, but to cash transfer programs.
How Everyday Welfare Became a Source of Regime Resilience
At the same time, there is another set of programs that is essentially universalistic. Even if these programs can be politically targeted for strategic reasons, they are universalistic in the sense that everyone is presumed to have access to them, and in practice, those who want access can obtain it. This closely resembles how the Misiones functioned under Chávez, or programs such as Misión Mercal. No one was asked for a government ID card or a Socialist Party card to buy subsidized food at Mercal supermarkets. You simply went in. Yet when you entered the store, saw the staff, and examined the packaging, it was clear that there was political messaging. The implicit message was that the government was doing good things for you. In this sense, it is comparable to Donald Trump signing COVID relief checks and sending them out as personal checks.
My view, then, is that when we try to understand why Chavismo’s popularity—and even Maduro’s support—has remained at around 30 percent, which appears to be roughly what he obtained in the election, we need to ask why, in the context of such a severe economic crisis, it did not fall to 10 percent. In Peru, for example, presidents often have single-digit approval ratings. Why did this not happen in Venezuela? Why was the revolution, in that sense, so resilient? The answer lies in its continued ability to build sources of legitimation, largely by conveying the idea that the state is being administered for you and on your behalf. Even amid economic crisis, the message remains: we are doing our job; we bring you food; we take care of your family’s needs.
When the Model Didn’t Change—but the Conditions Did
The persistence of Chavista governance raises questions about personalism. In retrospect, where do you see the key discontinuities between Chávez and Maduro—particularly regarding elite cohesion, coercive capacity, and the role of elections as rituals of legitimation rather than mechanisms of accountability?
Professor Francisco Rodríguez: Here again, I would return to the counterfactual I mentioned earlier: how different is what we are seeing now from what we might have seen under Chávez had he faced an economic crisis similar to the one Maduro confronted? My view is that the differences are not as pronounced as they are often assumed to be. I do not see major discontinuities in the political model itself, or even in the modes of governance. Many of the apparent discontinuities are better explained by external factors—most notably the collapse of oil revenues and the imposition of economic sanctions, both of which emerged from a particular evolution of the political conflict. That evolution did not stem from the imposition of a fundamentally different governing model, but rather from a deeper issue: the absence of compromise as a viable option within the political culture.
If there is a moment that can be identified as truly decisive—and again, this is not because Maduro is fundamentally different from Chávez—it is the opposition’s victory of a supermajority in the 2015 parliamentary elections, a result that Chavismo initially accepted. The government did not annul or steal the elections and formally recognized the outcome. It did, however, challenge the election of several legislators from the state of Amazonas, a move that ultimately deprived the opposition of its supermajority. That supermajority would have enabled the opposition to initiate proceedings against the Supreme Court or convene a constituent assembly. In that sense, it was a kind of nuclear option, and Chavismo neutralized it by invalidating those legislative seats, while still allowing the opposition to retain a simple majority.
In almost any political system, one would then expect negotiations over cohabitation to follow. Typically, a government in that position would approach the legislature and say, “Let’s work this out. Let’s find a way to govern together. What do you want, and what do we want?” But no such effort was made—by either side. There are, after all, different ways of operating within a political system. One is through negotiation; another is through economic incentives or coercion, which governments routinely employ. Minority parties are bought off; opposition blocs are peeled apart. The government controls the state apparatus and oil rents and can easily approach opposition legislators individually or target small centrist parties, offering ministerial posts or control over specific policy areas—housing, the environment, minority rights. These are standard political tools.
Moral Antagonism and the Breakdown of Political Compromise
In this case, the government had two basic options. It could have sat down with the opposition coalition to negotiate a coexistence arrangement that would allow governance and the passage of legislation. Alternatively, it could have pursued a piecemeal strategy, fragmenting the opposition to construct a working majority. Maduro did neither, and the opposition likewise refused to engage in such processes.
This is where I would locate the core problem. I would hesitate to call it a discontinuity in the political model itself, but it was certainly a discontinuity in outcomes. The system was simply not designed to operate under a constitutional arrangement that required cohabitation. And this is not unique to Chavismo. It reflects a deeper feature of Venezuelan political history. During the democratic period that began in 1958, parliamentary and presidential elections were held simultaneously, ensuring that presidents almost always governed with a compliant Congress. The lone exception was in 1993, when Rafael Caldera won the presidency with only a plurality, leaving his party without congressional control and forcing some form of accommodation.
The belief that governments do not need to negotiate with the opposition is deeply ingrained in Venezuelan political culture. That is where the system—on both sides—ultimately breaks down. And it breaks down, once again, because of the politics of moral antagonism we discussed earlier. How can you justify governing alongside an actor you have portrayed as an existential enemy, as the embodiment of unpatriotic or immoral behavior? You cannot. Neither side could.
This dynamic was evident on the opposition side as well. When Henry Ramos Allup assumed the presidency of the National Assembly, he announced that the opposition would seek a constitutional route to remove Maduro from office within six months. In effect, he was openly advocating regime change. Both sides were locked into this confrontational mode, and their inability to move beyond it precipitated the escalation of the political conflict—ultimately leading to the adoption of scorched-earth strategies that inflicted severe damage on the economy.
From Democratic Opposition to Zero-Sum Politics
And finally, Professor Rodríguez, drawing on your New York Times analysis of Machado’s hardliner identity—including the symbolic handing over of her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Trump—what does this episode reveal about the risks of moral absolutism, charismatic personalization, and alignment with coercive external power in populist contexts? More broadly, what does the Venezuelan case tell us about Trump’s transactional approach to authoritarian regimes and the dangers it poses for democratic oppositions elsewhere?
Professor Francisco Rodríguez: It is a very revealing episode because it encapsulates a central dilemma in opposition politics. Moderates within the opposition struggle to mobilize voters around their projects and are highly vulnerable to being denounced as collaborationists or as having been co-opted by the government. As a result, moderate opposition figures tend to reach a political dead end. Once they attempt to articulate an alternative based on compromise, they quickly lose momentum.
Returning to my earlier point about confrontation as part of the modus vivendi, the issue is not that no one has questioned this logic. Rather, within the opposition, those who have challenged it have not been electorally successful. This is evident in the case of Henri Falcón, who failed as a candidate in 2018 despite Maduro being as unpopular then as he was in 2024, according to opinion surveys. The same dynamic is visible with Henrique Capriles, who was once a highly popular opposition leader but lost significant support after adopting a more moderate stance. It is also evident in the case of Manuel Rosales, the governor of Zulia, who emerged as a plausible replacement after Machado was disqualified. Rosales had credibility as someone who had reclaimed Zulia from Chavismo and governed from the opposition without framing politics as a zero-sum struggle. Yet he was ultimately sidelined, largely because Machado’s supporters undermined him on the grounds that they reject any form of collaboration.
It is also important to recall that Machado herself was a vocal critic of Juan Guaidó, whom she regarded as too conciliatory toward Maduro. Her main criticism was that, as president of the 2015 National Assembly and interim president, he failed to invoke constitutional powers to formally call for foreign military intervention—effectively inviting external troops into the country. She criticized him forcefully for this. Looking further back, Machado was present at the swearing-in of Pedro Carmona as de facto president following the 2002 coup against Chávez. This is not mentioned simply to question her democratic credentials—though it is often raised in that context—but to underscore the narrative that underpins her political stance: the belief that Chavismo was never democratically legitimate. In her view, Venezuela was already a dictatorship in 2002, and a coup against that dictatorship was therefore justified.
Crisis, Charisma, and the Appeal of No Compromise
Venezuela’s controversial President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a rally on the 22nd anniversary of the coup against Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 13, 2024. Photo: StringerAL.
This narrative resonates strongly in a country that has experienced the largest economic contraction ever recorded in peacetime, where roughly a quarter of the population has emigrated, poverty rates have exceeded 90 percent, malnutrition—virtually nonexistent in the mid-2010s—has risen to more than 25 percent, and the government has grown increasingly authoritarian. In such conditions, it is understandable that voters are drawn to a leader who argues that Maduro remains in power because previous challengers were not forceful or resolute enough. This is how Machado constructs her political persona: as the uncompromising figure, the leader unwilling to strike a deal with Chavismo, the one who promises not coexistence but defeat. Her slogan, hasta el final—“to the end”—signals a final confrontation in which victory is assured.
This narrative mobilized voters on two levels. Traditional opposition supporters embraced it enthusiastically, given their deep hostility toward Chavismo. At the same time, more centrist voters—some of whom had previously supported Chavismo—were also drawn to her. In many respects, Machado embodied characteristics associated with Chávez himself: a young, decisive, energetic leader offering a dramatic rupture. The promise she made closely resembled the promise Chávez made in 1999. This helps explain why roughly a third of the Venezuelan electorate reports supporting María Corina Machado while simultaneously viewing Chávez as a good president.
That support, however, did not entail a transformation of her underlying narrative or that of her core constituency. Instead, it reinforced a political posture fundamentally incompatible with governing alongside Chavismo. This is where the Trump administration’s intervention becomes especially revealing. The decision was to remove Maduro—to decapitate the regime—without fully dismantling it. Comprehensive regime change would have required military occupation, significant loss of US personnel, and a long-term commitment unlikely to be sustained by public opinion. As Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, the costs of occupation often exceed those of initial military victory.
Instead, the United States adopted an approach reminiscent of earlier interventions, such as in Cuba and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War or in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua in the early twentieth century. The logic is straightforward: military leverage and conditionality remain in place, while local actors govern. It is more efficient to rule through domestic elites who follow US directives than to administer the country directly.
Why Machado Didn’t Fit the New Power Strategy
This framework also helps explain how Trump has framed his relationship with Machado. The implicit message is that she is admirable—even symbolic, as evidenced by the Nobel Peace Prize medal—but politically impractical. Incorporating her into governance would disrupt the broader strategy. After Maduro’s removal, Venezuela ceased to be primarily about Venezuela; it became a demonstration of power. The operation showcased the US capacity to remove a foreign leader with extraordinary efficiency, without the loss of American lives, and to detain him in the United States. Many observers, myself included, believe this likely involved internal collaboration, making it resemble a palace coup under the cover of military intervention. For Trump, however, the narrative is unambiguous: this is what American power looks like.
This is where Trump’s arrangement with Delcy Rodríguez acquires broader significance. The message is simple: compliance is rewarded. Speaking recently in Davos, Trump claimed—characteristically exaggerating—that Venezuela would earn more in the next six months than it had in the previous twenty years. That assertion is plainly false, given that those twenty years include the Chávez-era oil boom. But the rhetoric is less important than the underlying signal: the new Venezuelan authorities are doing what Washington demands, and they are being rewarded for it.
Trump delivered this message before an audience of European leaders, implicitly asking them which path they wished to follow—whether in relation to Venezuela, Greenland, or other geopolitical issues. Cooperation would bring benefits; resistance would invite hostility. This logic extends beyond Europe to the Middle East, including Gaza, and to Latin America more broadly. It reflects an effort to reassert US dominance in what Trump conceives as the Western Hemisphere, consistent with a revived Monroe Doctrine logic.
What emerges from this approach is an attempt to construct a functional protectorate—economically, and perhaps politically. Yet a protectorate, by definition, lacks full sovereignty. Under such conditions, the meaning of democracy becomes ambiguous. The likely outcome is an authoritarian system, potentially evolving into a form of competitive authoritarianism. Even if Venezuelan oil revenues were to increase by only a fraction of Trump’s exaggerated claims, the resulting economic growth—on the order of 20 to 25 percent annually for several years—would make such a regime politically viable.
Just as Maduro’s popularity collapsed with the economy, Delcy Rodríguez could gain substantial legitimacy if she presided over sustained economic expansion. That is the bargain Trump is offering—not out of benevolence, but because he wants Venezuela to serve as a showcase: a revitalized economy demonstrating the rewards of alignment with US hegemony. Ultimately, that is the message Trump seeks to send to democratic oppositions and authoritarian regimes alike: these are the new rules, and this is what you get when you play along.
Please cite as: Young, Alasdair R. (2026). “From Trade Skirmishes to Trade War? Transatlantic Trade Relations during the Second Trump Administration.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00128
Abstract The transatlantic economic relationship is the most valuable intercontinental relationship in the world. It is also uniquely interpenetrated by European and American firms, which are extensively invested in each other’s markets. Absent a comprehensive trade agreement, the transatlantic economic relationship has been characterized by ‘muddling through’ within the broad framework of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. The economic relationship between the United States (US) and Europe has periodically been punctuated by sometimes intense trade disputes. Historically, these disputes were narrowly focused and left the bulk of the transatlantic economic relationship untouched. Starting in spring 2025, the Trump administration dramatically departed from past US trade policy, imposing sweeping ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on all US trade partners as well as industry-specific tariffs on national security grounds. The European Union (EU) sought accommodation rather than confrontation, leading to a framework agreement in August. This agreement is fragile, but while it holds, it is a manifestation of ‘muddling through’, albeit under worse trading conditions than before Trump returned to office. It is possible that the relationship could deteriorate further.
Keywords: European Union; retaliation; tariffs; trade; Donald Trump; United States
A Valuable and Previously Generally Calm Economic Relationship
The transatlantic economy is the ‘largest and wealthiest market in the world’ (Hamilton and Quinlen 2025, 2). Despite the current political focus on trade in goods, in which the United States has run a persistent deficit with the EU for more than a quarter century (Hamilton and Quinlen 2025, 12), the transatlantic economy is rooted primarily in mutual foreign direct investment (FDI). Almost 40% of the global stock of US FDI is in the EU, and EU firms account for slightly more than 40% all the FDI in the United States. The economic activity of transnational corporations in each other’s markets is therefore an important component of the transatlantic economy (see Table 7.1). The overall transatlantic economic relationship is much more balanced than a focus on just goods would suggest. Moreover, due to the extent of the investment relationship, 64% of US goods imports from Europe in 2023 occurred withinthe same firm as did 41% of US exports to Europe (Hamilton and Quinlen 2025, vii). Thus, goods imports are used as inputs in domestic production.
As there is no bilateral trade agreement between the EU and the United States – the most ambitious effort to create one, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, ended with the first Trump administration – their trading relationship is subject to the rules and the most-favoured nation (MFN) tariffs they agreed to under the World Trade Organization (WTO) (see Chapter 8 in this report). Despite not having a trade agreement, in 2024, their average tariff rates were low and comparable: 1.47% on US imports from the EU and 1.35% on EU imports from the United States (Barata da Rocha et al 2025).
Table 7.1. The transatlantic economic relationship (2024) (US$ billion)
United States to the European Union
European Union to the United States
US–EU balance
Goods
372
609
–237
Services
295
206
89
Value-added by FDI (2022)
494
456
38
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (2025).
The transatlantic economic relationship has historically been relatively calm. It has, however, periodically been punctuated by high-profile trade disputes from the ‘Chicken Wars’ in the 1970s to disputes over bananas, hormone-treated beef, genetically modified crops and commercial aircraft subsidies in the 1990s and into the 2000s. Despite the attention they attracted, these disputes affected only a tiny fraction of transatlantic trade, and the more recent ones were contained within the WTO’s dispute settlement process (see Chapter 8 in this report). There were persistent, if episodic, efforts to try to address these transatlantic trade tensions, beginning with the ‘new transatlantic agenda’ in the 1990s. Historically, there was far more cooperation than conflict in the transatlantic economic relationship.
The Populist Turn in US Trade Policy
The transatlantic economic relationship has become much more confrontational under President Trump. He shares the populist view that trade is harmful and that the United States is being taken advantage of by foreigners, abetted by domestic elites (Baldwin 2025a, 1; Funke et al. 2023, 3280; Jones 2021, 29; and Box Figure 7.1). Trump considers the EU to be a particularly venal trade partner, describing it as ‘one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the world’ (quoted in Gehrke 2025).
Figure 7.1 Trump’s populist view of trade
Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache. … We allowed foreign countries to subsidize their goods, devalue their currencies, violate their agreements, and cheat in every way imaginable. – ‘Declaring America’s Economic Independence’, 28 June 2016.We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. – First Inaugural Address, 20 January 2017.… over the last several decades, the United States gave away its leverage by allowing free access to its valuable market without obtaining fair treatment in return. This cost our country an important share of its industrial base and thereby its middle class and national security. – The President’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda, 3 March 2025.For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. American steelworkers, auto workers, farmers and skilled craftsmen…watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream. — ‘Liberation Day’ speech, 2 April 2025.
In line with this rhetoric, President Trump took several steps during his first term that deviated from traditional US trade policy (Grumbach et al 2022, 237; Jones 2021, 71). He imposed a series of punitive tariffs on China in response to what the United States considered unfair trade practices. He also blocked the appointment of judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body, bringing the dispute settlement process to a halt (see Chapter 8 in this report). Despite characterizing the EU as ‘worse than China’ on trade in 2018 (Korade and Labott 2018), only the tariffs imposed on aluminium and steel imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (the so-called ‘Section 232 tariffs’) on the grounds of protecting national security directly impacted the EU. This use of Section 232 tariffs invoked a uniquely expansive understanding of national security that included trade causing substantial job, skill, or investment losses (Jones 2021, 74–75). The Trump administration also threatened tariffs on European governments that imposed digital services taxes on US platforms, although it did not impose them after those governments agreed to postpone implementation of the taxes. It was also set to impose national security tariffs on automobile imports when Trump left office. It did adopt enforcement tariffs on the EU as part of the long-running dispute over subsidies to Airbus, but that was in line with conventional US trade policy. The transatlantic economic relationship therefore deteriorated during the first Trump administration, but only modestly.
The Biden administration was not a huge fan of free trade (see, for instance, Sullivan 2023). It did not pursue bilateral trade agreements, seriously engage with WTO reform or enable the resumption of WTO dispute settlement. The United States also made extensive use of controls on semiconductor exports to China, including forcing European companies that used US intellectual property or inputs to comply with them. Under Biden, however, the United States focused on the economic and geopolitical challenges posed by China, so it adopted ceasefires with the EU over the steel and aluminium tariffs and in the aircraft dispute. Thus, while the transatlantic economic relationship did not fully return to where it was before Trump entered office, it was considerably better than when he left.
Trade policy in Trump’s second term, however, has made his first term look like a warm-up act.
A Shocked Transatlantic Economic Relationship
The second Trump administration has adopted a series of unprecedented trade measures that have dramatically impacted the EU. It significantly expanded its use of Section 232 tariffs, imposing them on a range of products important to the EU, including cars and car parts, aircraft and pharmaceuticals. President Trump also used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in an unprecedented way to impose ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on all US trading partners. President Trump initially announced that EU products, other than those subject to Section 232 tariffs or investigations, would be subject to an additional 20% tariff on top of the United States’ MFN tariff. He almost immediately announced that the additional tariffs would be lowered to 10% until 1 August to allow time for negotiations, but subsequently threatened to impose a 30% additional tariff on EU goods if no agreement were reached by the deadline.
With the deadline looming, the United States and the EU reached a political agreement, which was subsequently elaborated in a framework agreement. This agreement established a baseline 15% tariff on most EU products (seeTable 7.2). It had the effect of significantly reducing the tariffs the United States would have imposed on some of the EU’s most valuable exports, which were subject to Section 232 tariffs or investigations. Medicinal and pharmaceutical products, medicaments, cars and car parts and aircraft and associated parts accounted for 34% of the value of EU exports to the United States in 2024 (own calculations based on Eurostat 2025a). To secure this less-bad treatment, the EU agreed to eliminate all remaining tariffs on American industrial goods; give preferential market access for certain US seafood and non-sensitive agricultural products; and indicated that Europeans would purchase US weapons and liquified natural gas, and EU firms would invest in the United States (Politico 2025). The EU did not accede to US pressure to address its digital content and competition rules (Politico 2025). The European Commission (2025, 2) stressed that the deal ‘compares well’ to those secured by the United States’ other trade partners and thus EU exports remain competitive against other US imports. It also characterized the agreement as the ‘first important step’ toward reestablishing the stability and predictability of the transatlantic trading relationship and as a ‘roadmap’ for continuing negotiations to improve market access (European Commission 2025, 2).
Table 7.2 Framework agreement tariffs in context
Sector
2024
Without the deal
With the deal
General (IEEPA ‘reciprocal’)
3.4%*
30% + MFN rateAdditional tariff for steel and aluminium content
15%
Cars and car parts
2.5%
27.5%
15%
Pharmaceuticals (patented)
0–5%
100%**
15%
Pharmaceuticals (generic)
0–5%
0–5%
0–5%
Semiconductors
0–5%
Subject to Section 232 investigation
15%
Aircraft
Low
Subject to Section 232 investigation
Low
Aluminium
10% above the duty-free quota (based on historical levels)
50%
New tariff-rate quota to be negotiated
Steel
25% above the duty-free quota (based on historical levels)
50%
New tariff-rate quota to be negotiated
Notes: * The United States’ average MFN rate, which is the more appropriate comparator to the headline rate for the new tariffs, applies to a bit over 60% of EU exports, so the average tariff rate is lower (Nangle 2025). ** Unless the manufacturer is building a plant in the United States. Source: revised and updated from Berg (2025); European Commission (2025); WTO (2025)
The deal also included commitments to hold talks to address non-tariff barriers, to strengthen cooperation on economic security, including investment screening and export controls, and to enhance supply chain resilience, including for critical minerals, energy, and chips to power artificial intelligence (AI) (European Commission 2025; Politico 2025). These are long-standing areas of transatlantic cooperation that have yielded few results, with the notable exception of coordinating export controls on Russia in response to its war in Ukraine. It is therefore hard to assess how meaningful these new commitments are.
The EU’s commitment to eliminate industrial tariffs is unlikely to significantly affect EU industries, as these tariffs are generally low and already zero for all countries with which the EU has concluded free trade agreements (Berg 2025). The one exception is automobiles, where the EU’s tariff is relatively high (10%), and the United States is a major producer, although American cars are not necessarily to European tastes. The EU’s pledges on weapons and energy purchases, as well as new investments, are not binding (Berg 2025). The deal is very one-sided, but key EU industries – aviation, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors – avoided the worst that might have happened, and the EU did not concede much of economic significance. However, the agreement only mitigated the harm caused by higher US tariffs. By forestalling a trade war but not restoring the economic relationship to the way it was at the end of 2024, let alone improving it, the deal is a manifestation of ‘muddling through.’
The agreement, however, is fragile for three reasons. One is that there is opposition to the agreement in the EU. In particular, the European Parliament must approve lowering tariffs on US industrial and agricultural goods and it is considering amendments that would alter the agreement by making the preferential tariffs only temporary, allowing the EU to suspend preferential treatment if there is a surge in US imports and postponing EU tariff cuts on aluminium and steel until the United States reduces its own tariffs on the metals (Lowe 2025). The Commission will not be able to accept these changes to the deal, so there is likely to be a protracted process before the Parliament adopts the legislation necessary to implement the EU’s side of the deal. The United States has already expressed its unhappiness at the delay (Williams and Bounds 2025). Another reason the deal is fragile is that the Trump administration is known for coming back with further demands after an agreement has been reached (Sandbu 2025). For instance, since the deal, it has demanded that the EU ease environmental rules that impose burdens on US firms (Hancock, Foy and Bounds 2025). The United States, therefore, might threaten even higher tariffs to pressure the EU to change regulations that irritate US companies. The current deal is not great, but things could get worse.
The third source of fragility runs in the opposite direction. On 5 November 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether President Trump’s use of IEEPA to impose sweeping tariffs exceeded his authority, as two lower courts had found. Based on the justices’ questioning, there is an expectation that the Court will rule against the President in the next few months. If it does, the IEEPA tariffs that are part of the reason for the EU-US deal will go away. As the real benefits (such as they are) for the EU are due to the caps on the Section 232 tariffs, it would probably not be in the EU’s interests to try to renegotiate the deal, even if new tariffs are not imposed under other provisions.
Possible Policy Options for the EU
Although the EU contemplated imposing retaliatory tariffs, it has thus far chosen compromise over confrontation. As a result, there has not been a transatlantic trade war. Several commentators have criticized the EU for not retaliating, which might have led the United States to accept terms more favourable to the EU (Alemanno 2025; Baldwin 2025a, xii; Bounds et al. 2025; FT Editorial Board 2025; Malmström 2025). French President Macron lamented that the EU was not ‘feared enough’ by the United States (quoted in Caulcutt et al 2025).
While sufficiently robust retaliation might have made the United States more willing to strike a more favourable deal, the downside risks for the EU were considerable. In particular, the United States has ‘escalation dominance’ for at least two reasons (see also Berg 2025; Gehrke 2025). First, the EU relies on the United States militarily, which is particularly important in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine (Alemanno 2025; Berg 2025). Sabine Weyand, the EU’s director-general for trade, explained that ‘The European side was under massive pressure to find a quick solution to stabilise transatlantic relations with regard to security guarantees’ (quoted in Ganesh 2025). Second, European leaders have been more concerned than Trump about the adverse effects that imposing tariffs would have on their economies. Given those economic and security concerns, the member states were unwilling to support a trade war with the United States (Berg 2025; Bound et al. 2025; Malmström 2025).
There are three intersecting issues confronting the EU going forward: 1) How to mitigate the negative economic costs of the United States’ new, higher tariffs; 2) How to reduce the EU’s dependence on the United States to improve its bargaining position; and 3) How to respond should the United States come back with further demands for politically unacceptable changes to EU policies. The first and third of these issues might be affected by the Trump administration’s emerging concern about the harmful impact of tariffs on prices in the wake of dramatic Democratic victories in November’s elections (Desrochers 2025; Swanson et al. 2025).
The EU has already taken steps to mitigate the consequences of losing access to the US market. The Commission has begun the process of signing the EU’s trade agreement with Mercosur and its upgraded agreement with Mexico. It has also finalized negotiations with Indonesia and is pursuing negotiations with India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Even combined, however, these economies come nowhere near the importance of the US market (see Table 7.3). Given the EU’s economic and geopolitical concerns about China, a trade agreement with China is out of the question (see Chapter 6 in the present report). There are no other significant markets with which the EU does not already have preferential trade agreements. There is, however, scope to improve trading arrangements with the UK and Switzerland, which accounted for 13% and 7% of EU exports in 2024, respectively (García Bercero et al. 2024). Nonetheless, the EU will not be able to offset the loss of access to the US market through trade agreements. That said, the White House’s greater concern about the cost of living raises the possibility that the EU might be able to secure tariff relief for additional products (Foy 2025; Gus 2025).
Table 7.3 European Union exports to selected markets in 2024
€ million
Share of extra-EU exports
United States
532,697
21%
Mercosur
55,168
2%
India
48,701
2%
UAE
44,389
2%
Malaysia
17,854
1%
Indonesia
9,810
0%
Philippines
7,730
0%
Source: Author’s own calculations based on Eurostat (2025).
Given the limited scope for securing improved market access, there is a strong case for the EU to look inward to pursue reforms that will both foster economic growth and competitiveness and enhance its military capabilities. The former will help to offset the loss of the US market, while the latter will help to redress the United States’ escalation dominance. The EU and its member states have launched initiatives on both goals, but they will take time to yield results, even with greater political impetus.
Brussels will face tough choices if Washington threatens to impose even higher tariffs unless the EU changes its rules on food safety, the environment and/or the digital economy. The EU could choose to retaliate to try to get the United States to back down. To avoid the adverse effects of imposing its own tariffs, the EU might target services – especially digital and financial services – where the United States runs a trade surplus (Gehrke 2025; Sandbu 2025). The EU might also restrict exports of key inputs to US manufacturing, since it accounts for 19% of such inputs and is a particularly important source of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and manufacturing machinery (Baldwin 2025b). The EU could also limit US firms’ access to some key services – including insurance, shipping and commodity trading. Curbing those goods or service exports, however, would negatively affect European firms.
Thus, while the EU has the potential to inflict economic pain on the United States, doing so would significantly harm itself. Rather, it might be better for the EU to simply endure the tariffs and wait Trump out. Arguably, it was not China’s retaliatory tariffs that caused the United States to back down during the summer, but the domestic economic and political pain caused by sky-high US tariffs on key Chinese industrial inputs (Baldwin 2025b). Given the administration’s greater concern about the cost of living, particularly with the US midterm elections approaching in November 2026, it might refrain from imposing tariffs or be unable to sustain them for long. Should the EU choose to retaliate against new US tariffs, a trade war would be likely, which would imply the transatlantic trading relationship ‘breaking apart’. Continuing to ‘muddle through’ is probably the preferable approach.
(*) Alasdair R. Young is Professor and Neal Family Chair in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is Director of the School’s Center for Research on International Strategy and Policy and is Interim Associate Dean for Faculty Development for Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. He was Co-editor of JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies (2017–2022) and was Chair of the European Union Studies Association (USA) (2015–2017). Before joining Georgia Tech in 2011 he taught at the University of Glasgow for 10 years. Prior to that he held research posts at the European University Institute and the University of Sussex. He has written extensively on EU trade policy and transatlantic economic relations and performed consultancy work for the United States and United Kingdom governments and for the European Commission. Email: alasdair.young@gatech.edu
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Please cite as: Jones, Kent. (2026). “Transatlantic Trade, the Trump Disruption and the WTO.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00129
Abstract This chapter traces the evolution of transatlantic trade relations within the rules-based trading system established during the post-Second World War period by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which later became the World Trade Organization (WTO). United States-led hegemonic stability supported European recovery through the Marshall Plan and later through backing for European integration, linking trade liberalization with political stability and containment of Soviet influence. As European economies revived, commercial frictions emerged, but most disputes were managed – if not always resolved – through GATT/WTO negotiations and dispute settlement. Globalization created new opportunities but also regulatory tensions that multilateral rules struggled to accommodate. Efforts to craft deeper discipline through the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) ultimately failed amid divergent regulatory approaches. Over time, differences on core WTO principles have eroded the shared legitimacy of panel and Appellate Body rulings. The election of Donald Trump marked a rupture: his use of national security exceptions and abandonment of most-favoured nation (MFN) practices triggered a global trade conflict and challenged the WTO’s foundations. The European Union (EU) now confronts difficult choices on diversification, systemic WTO reform and future trade leadership.
Keywords: transatlantic trade; European Union; populism; World Trade Organization; Donald Trump
Transatlantic trade relations during the post-Second World War period coincided with the establishment of the global trading rules system, first under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), later transforming into the World Trade Organization (WTO), along with the development of European economic and political integration. While there were numerous transatlantic trade disputes, GATT/WTO dispute settlement provisions and a joint political commitment to peaceful trade relations contributed to joint economic growth and stability. As postwar recovery continued, however, disruptive elements began to appear. The growth in GATT/WTO membership among developing countries – including China – created trade pressures on both the United States and European Union (EU) member states as global trade competition increased. The informal GATT dispute settlement procedures gave way to the more legalistic approach of the WTO, making US–EU disputes lengthier and more contentious.
Meanwhile, the increasingly complex issues of regulatory and trade-adjacent issues prevented a successful conclusion of a formal bilateral US–EU trade agreement. Finally, the mercantilist tendencies of the Trump presidency escalated US–EU trade tensions and led to a significant erosion of WTO rules themselves. With the United States retreating from its former leadership role and institutional obligations in the WTO, the EU was forced to consider various strategies for dealing with the evolving institutional environment of global trade, including leadership or joint leadership in a reformed WTO-like global trading order, an enhanced set of new bilateral trade agreements, or ‘muddling through’ the current difficulties with hopes of bringing the United States and China back into a reconstituted WTO.
US-led Postwar Trade, Aid and Security for Europe
Postwar US trade policy focused on creating a framework for global trade liberalization and economic growth. The launch of the GATT in 1947 established US-centred hegemonic stability, based on common trade rules for all participants, a forum for negotiations and a process of dispute settlement. The most-favoured-nation clause required non-discrimination among trading partners in the system, along with tariff binding through trade liberalization treaties and the peaceful resolution of trade disputes to prevent trade wars. These institutional features also promoted growing transatlantic investment flows, which reinforced trade growth. All current EU member states joined the GATT (or later the WTO) either before or in conjunction with their EU accession.
Transatlantic trade relations were also linked with postwar recovery through the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) and US support for European economic integration. The US policy goal was to create regional political and economic stability as a bulwark against Soviet expansion, thereby supporting democratic governments in Europe (Gehler 2022). The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 cultivated a close military and security relationship among the United States, Canada and European countries explicitly designed to deter Soviet aggression. Its membership grew during the Cold War and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and many Eastern European countries formerly aligned with the Soviet Union also joined. Strong US leadership of NATO paralleled the expansion of transatlantic trade, as most European NATO members were also part of the EU. Between 1960 and 2024, transatlantic trade increased in real terms from roughly $100 billion to $8.7 trillion. This expansion corresponds to a compound annual growth rate of 7.3% – higher than the United States’ trade growth with all partners (6.3%) and the EU’s global trade growth (6.9%).
Transatlantic Trade and the GATT/WTO System
Continued postwar economic growth and globalization created further transatlantic trade opportunities but also heightened tensions, driven by competing commercial interests and differing trade policies. These issues were largely contained, if not always resolved, through GATT/WTO dispute settlement and negotiation. In the early years of European integration, trade disputes under the GATT system primarily concerned agricultural issues and clashes over US trading partners’ access to the common market (Hudec 1988). As European economic integration expanded and deepened, later disputes became more complex, contentious, longer-lasting and often bitter. The GATT’s successor organization, the WTO, took over protracted disputes over allowable government subsidies for Boeing (from the United States) and Airbus (from the EU), the contested safety of beef hormones, banana trade preferences for former EU colonies and controversies over the use and limits of WTO safeguard measures. Yet throughout these years, the GATT/WTO dispute settlement served a valuable purpose by providing an institutional framework for compartmentalizing such disputes while allowing normal trade relations to continue. The United States and the EU shared an ethos of cooperation that favoured trade liberalization and the stability of trade relations.
However, globalization and the expansion of the WTO to include many developing countries created new pressures on the trading system. Adjustment problems mounted in advanced industrialized countries, reaching a peak after China joined the WTO in 2001. Evolving comparative advantage, combined with increasingly mobile capital in the global economy, culminated in the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, further dampening support for globalization (Hays 2009). The weight of rapid change also put pressure on the dispute settlement system, as many countries used WTO trade law measures and subsidies to protect their domestic industries, which their trading partners challenged. China posed a special problem, as its government support for state-owned enterprises did not neatly fall under WTO subsidy disciplines. Dispute settlement decisions in all these cases did not always satisfy the litigants, and the United States and EU grew increasingly frustrated with certain WTO dispute settlement outcomes, including several between them.
A particularly volatile flashpoint was the growing criticism of the WTO dispute settlement Appellate Body’s (AB) controversial decisions, sparking charges of judicial overreach and a violation of WTO members’ sovereignty (Miranda and Miranda 2023). President Obama subsequently vetoed the appointment of AB judges he deemed unfair to US interests, an action repeated later by President Trump. Other countries, including the EU, suspected that judicial nominations were becoming politicized (Shaffer et al. 2017). These conflicts culminated eventually in the suspension of Appellate Body activities in 2019. Since then, the WTO dispute settlement body has been unable to litigate cases to completion, a sign that the WTO system has been weakening under the weight of rigid judicialization of dispute settlement (Busch and Reinhardt 2003).
After the founding of the WTO in 1995, multilateral trade liberalization also weakened. Several rounds of earlier GATT/WTO negotiations had lowered global tariffs, but many non-tariff barriers remained. Existing GATT/WTO rules appeared inadequate to secure future gains from trade by removing non-tariff barriers specific to particular industries and governments, calling for new negotiations on trade-related government policies and more flexible dispute settlement rules and processes. Meanwhile, the WTO’s protracted Doha Round of negotiations (2001–2009) failed to achieve broad and comprehensive trade liberalization, suggesting that the WTO had become too large and divided to address the varied issues of its increasingly diverse membership.
With these WTO constraints and shortcomings in mind, many countries turned to regional trade agreements under GATT Article 24, which proliferated rapidly. The United States and the EU also set out to negotiate an ambitious bilateral agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Negotiations began formally in July 2013, creating 24 joint working groups that indicated the complexity and breadth of the negotiations. The most important issues focused on harmonizing regulations and reducing non-tariff barriers. Yet the negotiating bandwidth was not wide enough to accommodate cross-cutting trade and non-trade issues, including climate change, financial regulations, subsidies, labour standards and health and safety measures. Bargaining over trade-offs across so many sectors of public interest was especially difficult since their trade negotiators could not effectively represent adjacent environmental and social health interests in their home capitals in a coordinated manner.
Furthermore, limited public access to information on the negotiations sparked a backlash in both the United States and the EU, and a final agreement would have required contentious ratification in all EU countries and in the US Congress. The election of Donald Trump – no friend of trade cooperation – to the presidency in 2016 stalled the TTIP talks shortly afterwards, and the European Commission (EC) abandoned the negotiations in 2019. Since then, a US–EU agreement of deeper economic integration has remained out of reach.
The Trump Shock
The WTO, in its already weakened state, faced threats to its very foundations with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and transatlantic trade relations suffered as a result. Trump’s presidential campaigns combined anti-immigrant rhetoric with a protectionist platform linking imports with de-industrialization, which he described as ‘American carnage’. He placed blame for both issues at the feet of ‘global elites’, whom he accused of opening US borders to illegal immigrants and job-stealing trade agreements. Trump’s political strategy was typical of right-wing populism, instilling anger in his base of disaffected, culturally conservative ‘true Americans’ against liberal elitist internationalists.
Trump also had a long-standing fascination with tariffs as the key to a country’s prosperity, but unlike other populist leaders, he was uniquely positioned to attack the foundations of the global trading system. Not only was the United States the world’s largest import market, but it was also the country most responsible for founding and leading the GATT/WTO system. Trump adopted a zero-sum mercantilist approach to trade in which imports amounted to a loss of national wealth and exports served as the primary measure of economic strength. In this framework, tariffs became a form of retribution against countries Trump accused of dumping ‘unwanted’ imports into the US market. He also asserted that tariffs were always paid by foreigners, a key element of his false claim that tariffs do not raise prices.
In his first administration, Trump waged a trade war with China and imposed national security tariffs on steel and aluminium under Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (the so-called ‘Section 232 tariffs’). This move was his first significant anti-WTO action, a subversion of GATT Article 21. The rarely used provision had always been reserved for member countries facing demonstrably hostile foreign actions from other member countries, against which they could legitimately suspend GATT/WTO rules and restrict imports. Trump declared that the United States could self-declare a national security emergency for any reason, including unemployment and reduced output in ‘strategic’ industries. Other WTO members, he asserted, could not challenge the US decision or retaliate against it. This reinterpretation of the rules opened the door for any WTO member to unilaterally raise tariffs on any domestic industry for any self-declared national security reason. All foreign suppliers of steel imports to the US, not least the EU, were surprised to discover that their shipments suddenly represented a security threat to their largest trading partner and erstwhile trade ally. In his second term, Trump extended Section 232 tariffs to cover automobiles, auto parts, copper, pharmaceuticals, kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and heavy trucks, with more products planned (Covington and Burling LLP 2025).
However, Trump had even broader tariff plans, having devised a narrative of global foreign responsibility for US trade deficits. He announced a set of tariffs against nearly every country, while abandoning all negotiated WTO tariff commitments and the MFN clause completely. Denouncing what he considered an unfairly low, long-standing US effective tariff rate of approximately 2.1%, he devised a set of variable ‘reciprocal’ tariffs based on a flawed economic explanation of trade imbalances and applied them in a discriminatory manner, ranging from 10% to 49% (Doherty 2025). Each US trading partner would have to submit concessions to Trump individually to avoid his unilateral tariffs and gain any additional access to the US import market, usually in the form of greater and sometimes preferential market access for US exports, the elimination of what Trump deemed unfair non-tariff barriers, and commitments to make significant foreign investments in US-based manufacturing. Trump’s goal in his trade policy was to achieve total control over tariffs and trade negotiations. To this end, he chose to impose his global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which he interpreted as giving the president complete control over trade policy by executive order. Tariff rates and their duration would be at the president’s discretion and subject to change at any time, according to his preferences, without congressional ratification or mandatory review.
The Trump–EU Trade Framework
Trump’s abandonment of WTO rules became abundantly clear in his announcement on 2 April 2025 of unilateral tariff increases that discriminated among countries, followed by bilateral negotiations with the EU and other countries. These measures violated GATT articles 1 (MFN) and 2 (tariff binding). The primary basis for US ‘emergency’ tariffs was a long-standing US trade deficit, which appears inconsistent with GATT Article 21 (Kho et al., 2024). In bypassing WTO dispute settlement procedures, the United States also violated Article 3 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding, which was meant to prevent trade wars, a key underlying motivation in establishing the original GATT. The Trump negotiations were entirely bilateral and one-sided, with his demands for concessions in exchange for US import market access, violating the WTO norm of multilateralism and the provisions of GATT Article 24. US demands for preferential market access to the EU in certain products further violate GATT Article 1. In addition, final tariffs in the US–EU agreement were not bound, a further violation of GATT Article 2, leaving open the possibility that Trump could unilaterally raise those tariffs in the future (WTO 1999).
The initial US tariff assigned to the EU was an alarmingly high 30%, along with special Section 232 tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminium. From the perspective of the initial US tariffs, the Trump–EU ‘framework’ agreement was greeted with relief by many EU officials, even though the final 15% baseline tariff was more than twelve times the average US tariff rate of 1.2% on EU goods that prevailed at the end of 2024 (see U.S. Department of Commerce 2025). Young (chapter 7 in this report) provides details of its provisions. EU trade officials, like those from other countries, had faced a one-sided, coercive negotiation. Many observers complained that the EC had failed to fight hard enough for EU economic interests through retaliation (Stiglitz 2025). The final package, however, seemed to indicate that the United States softened its terms, perhaps to forestall possible EU retaliation, as shown by lower US tariffs and more exemptions than originally announced. Christine Lagarde (2025) insisted that EU tit-for-tat escalation would only have provoked the tariff-loving Trump, risking a much worse outcome for the EU (see also Baldwin 2025, 83–92). An economic perspective suggests that retaliation would be justified only if it forced the United States to back down from a multi-stage trade war, which typically amplifies economic damage to all parties. The EU did in fact prepare retaliatory measures that could have demonstrated its resolve, including limiting US tariffs on automobiles and pharmaceuticals, two of the EU’s most valuable export products (UN Comtrade 2025).
While the framework agreement contains specific tariff commitments, it lacks the structure and specificity of a WTO treaty. US negotiators were careful to make the US tariff rates contingent on European Parliament approval of its new US trade obligations, but there is no corresponding mention of required US congressional approval or ratification, presumably since Trump was basing the agreement on an executive order with no congressional input. The United States’ obligations therefore appear not to be treaty obligations. Another aspect of the deal is that EU commitments on natural gas and computer chip purchases, and on $600 billion of foreign investment in the United States, appear not to be legally enforceable, as they involve largely private, contingent commercial transactions and investment. If these or other targets are not met, the question arises as to what recourse the United States will have to redress the EU’s noncompliance. The answer appears to be that Trump, through the end of his term in 2028, would be able to raise US tariff rates on EU goods unilaterally in response.
Outlook for the European Union
Despite many trade disputes between the United States and European countries since the end of the Second World War, the GATT/WTO transatlantic trade rules enabled trade to expand. Dispute settlement procedures, while imperfect, tended to keep trade conflict separate from broader trade relations until Trump’s second term. The best strategy for the EU in response to Trump’s disruptions is therefore to seek, as much and as broadly as possible, to expand rules-based trade with its non-US trading partners. Trade with the United States will require an extended period of capricious tariff policies by Trump and possibly his successors, but the framework agreement with the United States suggests that the EU is likely at least to maintain access – albeit reduced – to this valuable import market in the meantime. ‘Muddling through’ the current US–EU trade framework will probably require the EU to adopt a transactional (rather than rules-based) approach to transatlantic trade, involving sector-by-sector or item-by-item bargaining, matching Trump’s mercantilist instincts. After Trump leaves office, it may be possible to establish more systematic and predictable trade relations, as US businesses are likely to push for a more open and predictable trade and investment environment.
Nonetheless, the EU should seek to apply WTO rules in expanding its export markets through new trade agreements (see Poletti, chapter 6 in this report), as growth in international trade is likely to occur outside the United States, especially in Southeast Asia (Altman and Bastian 2025). Inevitably, EU trade expansion under WTO rules could trigger threats and sanctions from the United States if it persists in forcing its trading partners to grant preferential treatment to US exporters, in violation of MFN rules. Managing this problem will be challenging in any EU efforts to ‘muddle through’ mercantilist US trade policies. Yet the EU and other countries have continued to apply WTO rules to their non-US trade, and the United States is likely to reach the limit of its ability to bully its trading partners into cheating on WTO rules they wish to maintain as long as the United States remains a WTO member. Successful WTO-based trade expansion by the EU and other countries could also provide an incentive for the United States to return to the same rules.
Planning trade policies for the future, however, is difficult because of uncertainties in the short- and medium-term. Trump’s tariffs are unpopular with the US electorate, but there will be no legislative check on his policies as long as Republican majorities in Congress remain beholden to him. However, Democrats will challenge these majorities in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. It remains unclear who will run for president in 2028. Vice President J.D. Vance appears to be Trump’s successor for the nomination, but it is not certain that he commands the loyal following that Trump has. The Democratic Party, for its part, has no clear leading presidential candidate at this writing, and no clear alternative trade policy platform to rally around. A more trade-friendly US president from either party could eventually move the United States back towards trade policies consistent with WTO rules, but this may also depend on reforms in contested WTO rules and dispute settlement procedures, especially as they pertain to China’s trade policies.
A more immediate issue, unresolved at this writing, is the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. SCOTUS has agreed to expedite the decision, but is not bound by a timetable, and its verdict may not be definitive. A verdict vindicating Trump’s tariffs would allow them to stand indefinitely, or until Congress succeeds in challenging them. An unconditional overturning of Trump’s tariffs would cause them to revert to a pre-Trump effective level of 2.1%. Yet compromise verdicts might allow the tariffs to continue, subject to duration or level limits, or to additional congressional oversight or legislation (see Miller and Chevalier 2025). Even a complete reversal of the IEEPA tariffs is unlikely to deter Trump from imposing additional tariffs under other emergency trade laws, especially Section 232 (Werschkul 2025).
Beyond US domestic politics, geopolitical uncertainties abound. The vacuum left by Trump’s abandonment of US leadership in the WTO, if it continues, will require a large country or a coalition of countries to fill or coordinate new institutional leadership roles. The difficulty of resetting WTO rules-based trade is that no single country can replace the United States in terms of economic size, political influence, financial market depth and reserve currency status, elements that reinforced the United States’ previous leadership of the global trading system. The United States may eventually re-emerge from its Trumpian protectionism to reclaim leadership of the multilateral trading system. Still, a prolonged period of US tariffs and economic nationalism is likely to severely weaken the US economy. The more US economic and political attributes erode due to self-inflicted damage, the closer the United States comes to forfeiting its chance to return to its previous position of global hegemonic leadership.
In the meantime, the EU’s role in the future trading system faces a highly volatile global institutional environment marked by geopolitical divides, scepticism towards globalization, and a general lack of international trust and cooperation (Zelicovich 2022). The EU will first need political consensus among its own member countries to pursue a broader role in global trade governance and corresponding enthusiasm from its potential partners in leading any post-US trading system.
A crucial issue in this regard is devising a system that can accommodate, if not discipline, China and its state-managed trade policies. The United States missed the opportunity to rally other countries to common action regarding China’s opaque trade interventions through negotiation and reform of WTO rules. In the absence of US leadership, a revitalization of rules-based trade liberalization will require a strong coalition of countries to bargain together to address this problem. Only then might large regional trade alliances such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the EU and perhaps others merge, possibly eventually drawing in China and the United States as well, to provide the critical mass for a new global trade institution. The ability of the EU to take on a more prominent role in global trade leadership will depend on the strength of its internal economy, its internal political cohesion, its foreign policy engagement and its skill in trade diplomacy (see Smith 1999). If the EU is not capable of the sort of hegemonic leadership the United States once exercised, a different, more fragile institutional model of cooperative trade leadership will be necessary. Yet an EU committed to WTO principles will still be able to play a crucial role in achieving institutional change alongside other trading powers.
The Trump trade war, disruptive as it has been, may ironically provide an opportunity for the EU and other WTO members to correct, reform and strengthen WTO rules and processes of dispute settlement and trade liberalization for all countries. The EU should continue its efforts to bridge the gap in WTO dispute settlement through its Multiparty Interim Appeal (MPIA) initiative (Wouters and Hegde 2022). The scope of policy space in trade agreements, issues related to changing technologies, and the WTO consensus rule should all be on the table for reform. Differences in trade-related environmental, labour and human rights preferences, as well as dissimilar approaches to regulation, need to be made compatible with normal trade relations at the global level. One potentially important, but so far little-used, provision of the WTO is Annex IV, allowing sub-groups of WTO members to conclude plurilateral agreements on smaller agendas of specific issues, while being open to the accession of new members. Hoekman et al. (2025) suggest this approach for negotiating new agreements among like-minded countries on environmental and other trade-related issues. Negotiating such agreements could free the WTO from its consensus straitjacket, which has stymied progress on many trade liberalization proposals. The EU in particular would benefit from a ‘variable geometry’ of social interests in trade policy that are currently difficult to pursue within the existing WTO framework. Adapting to the realities of globalized, developmentally diverse, environmentally sensitive and geopolitically engaged world trade, perhaps on an incremental basis, is likely to be essential for its institutional survival.
(*) Kent Jones, Dr. ès sci. pol. (international economics), Graduate Institute of International Studies/University of Geneva, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Babson College, where he taught from 1982 until his retirement in 2023. He continues his academic interests in trade policy and trade institutions, having published several books and articles on these topics, including Populism and Trade (2021). His teaching also included visiting appointments at Brandeis University, the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and the University of Innsbruck, Austria. In addition, he served as a visiting senior economist at the U.S. Department of State. Email: kjones@babson.edu
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Please cite as: Smith, Michael. (2026). “Overview and Background: International Institutions, Populism and Transatlantic Relations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00130
Abstract Populist politicians and parties view international institutions as instruments of competing state interests and see global governance as empowering a detached globalist elite that must be challenged in the name of the people. This stance contrasts with perspectives that treat international institutions as semi-autonomous actors or as arenas that facilitate communication and responsiveness across societies. The two Trump administrations represent an extreme form of United States (US) unilateralism and ‘domesticism,’ prioritizing domestic needs as the foundation of international leadership. Although the European Union (EU)’s long-standing commitment to multilateral institutions has been modified in recent years—partly in response to US pressure and partly due to internal populist currents—it continues to support transatlantic and global governance. The progression from ‘Trump 1.0’ through the Biden administration to ‘Trump 2.0’ reflects both enduring trends in US foreign policy and a weakening of constraints on presidential action. Whereas ‘Trump 1.0’ faced domestic and international limits, and Biden only partially restored multilateralism, ‘Trump 2.0’ pursues a far more radical and unconstrained agenda. These policies reshape international institutions and the broader international order, posing both risks and limited opportunities for the EU. The chapter outlines three strategic responses for the EU: reflex, resistance and reconfiguration, applied across the volume’s three scenarios.
Keywords: United States; Trump administrations; European Union; international institutions; multilateralism
The current tensions between the United States (US), the European Union (EU) and other actors in transatlantic relations can be seen in part as a continuation of a number of trends. Since the growth of what might be termed the Euro–American system in the 1950s, there have been tensions centring on US leadership and how it is exercised, the emergence of the European integration project and its impact on transatlantic relations, and the changing domestic politics of the United States, European countries and what is now the European Union (Smith, Guay and Morgenstern-Pomorski 2025, chapter 1; Sloan 2016). Although the Euro–American system has become largely encompassed by the US–EU relationship, there are other important dimensions, particularly in security politics, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in the late 1940s and 1950s, retains a central role and has itself been a long-standing focus of transatlantic tensions over burden-sharing and the contributions of the allies. Such tensions, although at times severe, have largely been contained: partly as a reflection of common threat perceptions, partly as a reflection of shared values and a commitment to liberal democracy among the members of the system. This does not mean that everything has been plain sailing: almost every decade since the 1950s has seen transatlantic crises, some of which (for example, over the Iraq War in 2003) have been seen as presaging the ‘death of the west’ (Lieven 2003, Pond 2004).
Many of these crises and continuing tensions have centred on the role of international institutions. US leadership has on many occasions veered towards US unilateralism and towards ‘domesticism’ – the tendency to put US domestic politics and economics first, and to see international institutions as inconvenient interlocutors to be avoided or attacked if they cannot be manipulated. This inclination is evident both in the broadest terms – for example, the idea of a rules-based international order and the centrality of international law and diplomacy – and in respect of specific institutions, for example, those of the international financial order. At the same time, Europeans and particularly the evolving European Union, have placed their faith in multilateralism, the rules-based order and in the legitimacy of international institutions; this is hardly surprising given the genealogy of the European project, and the ways in which engagement with international institutions endows the EU with international legitimacy. Collective defence and NATO’s role as a European security organization have also fostered a form of multilateralism, qualified by the United States’ dominant role as the alliance’s key contributor.
Given this broad background, what are the specific characteristics of the current transatlantic challenge to international institutions? At one level, it is the challenge of populist approaches to international order. Both in Europe and in the United States, the current politics of populism imply a super-charged priority for domestic politics, the assertion of sovereignty and forms of nativism as the basis for foreign policy, and thus a version of international order based on the power and interests of competing states (Wainer, Destradi, and Zürn 2024; Pacciardi, Spandler, and Söderbaum 2024). As a result, the EU has been challenged from within by member states asserting their right to dissent from or obstruct policies, and externally by the actions of the United States under the two Trump administrations (2017–2021 and January 2025 to the present). In this version of international politics, the role of international institutions is fundamentally challenged: they can be seen as either instruments of the dominant states or as obstacles to the legitimate actions of national authorities. This set of views constitutes a challenge to principles of multilateralism, to ideas of global governance, and to the idea that international institutions can become either independent actors in specific fields or spaces for the development of ideas about a wide variety of activities in areas such as development, conflict resolution, human rights or the environment. Populism sees these activities as generating a cross-national elite, which in itself is a challenge to the will of the people and the needs of the national state.
In this context, the advent of ‘Trumpism’ as a form of populism and potential authoritarianism has major resonance. Such a stance by the United States is in itself not unprecedented; the predominance of isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s, and elements of Reaganism in the 1980s can be seen as precursors or sources of the Trump posture (in fact, ‘America First’ and ‘make America great again’ have been revived by Trump as slogans, not created by him). Here, the influence of domesticism is both explicit and wide-ranging, and is made more potent by the United States’ position as (still) the predominant economic and military power in the global arena. That arena is changing, and the emergence of new rivals to the United States is another key element in the current and continuing challenge; most notably, the rise of China and the revisionism of Russia has provided a stimulus to the projection of US domestic concerns and a determination to place American interests at the core of international action. No clearer illustration of the implications for international institutions can be found than in the US National Security Strategy published in December 2017, at the end of the first year of the first Trump administration: The United States will prioritize its efforts in those organizations that serve American interests, to ensure that they are strengthened and supportive of the United States, our allies, and our partners. Where existing institutions and rules need modernizing, the United States will lead to update them. At the same time, it should be clear that the United States will not cede sovereignty to those that claim authority over American citizens and are in conflict with our constitutional framework (The White House 2017, 40).
Such a statement is a clear departure from the principles of multilateralism: the idea that international institutions can add value and contribute to global public goods in a wide range of issue areas. No less is it a challenge to the established principles of EU external action, which embody a commitment to multilateral institutions as a core value, explicitly stated in the Global Strategy of 2016: Without global norms and the means to enforce them, peace and security, prosperity and democracy – our vital interests – are at risk. Guided by the values on which it is founded, the EU is committed to a global order based on international law, including the principles of the UN Charter, which ensure human rights, sustainable development and lasting access to the global commons…The EU will strive for a strong UN as the bedrock of the multilateral rules-based order, and develop globally coordinated processes with international and regional organisations, states and non-state actors (European Union 2016, 39).
For the EU, this general challenge from its most important international partner has, in part, been linked to challenges from within: the governments of Hungary, Slovakia and – until the elections of 2023 – Poland have challenged the legitimacy of EU actions and have professed their alignment with Trumpian populism. Although there have been some moves in EU external action away from strong multilateralism (partly as a result of pressure from the United States), the contrast remains stark (Youngs and Smith 2018; Smith 2018). Whilst Trumpian policies see international institutions as arenas for competition and as subordinate to national priorities, the EU still collectively prioritizes them as contributions to the global order and as arenas within which it can realize its role as a ‘power’ in the global arena.
From ‘Trump 1.0’ to ‘Trump 2.0’
There is no doubt that leaders in the EU saw the first Trump administration as a severe challenge, not only to specific EU interests but also to the norms of multilateralism and the rules-based international order on which the EU’s international legitimacy partly rested (Peterson 2018; Riddervold and Newsome 2018). In May 2018, the then president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, identified the US administration as a ‘capricious’ challenge, reinforcing the case for greater EU self-reliance (Tusk 2018). The four years of ‘Trump 1.0’ constituted a period of constant tension, not only relating to the EU and its policies (described by Trump as a ‘foe’) but also to the underpinnings of the EU’s international status. The Trump attack on international institutions, focused on the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a range of other agencies, called into question the status of international institutions in general, whilst the administration’s attacks on NATO threatened one of the key enabling pillars of the European project. On the whole, though, the worst did not happen: the administration was constrained domestically by its evident lack of preparation, and thus was unable to bend institutions such as the State Department to its will whilst experiencing internal conflicts that further weakened its capacity to act. At the same time, the residual effects of the Liberal International Order (LIO) and its rules-based system were able to moderate at least some of the Trump initiatives (Peterson 2018; Smith 2018, 2021; Schade 2023).
Part of the EU’s response to the Trump administration between 2017 and 2021 thus actually amounted to a policy of ‘wait and see’. European resistance to the erosion of the multilateral order was at least in part possible because of the limitations of ‘Trump 1.0’ and the Union’s capacity to muster collective resilience; in part, the Union’s leaders could hope that something better might emerge after the 2020 presidential election. The installation of Joe Biden as president in 2021 seemed to indicate that the period of contestation and disruption might be no more than a major blip or ‘bump in the road’ towards renewed EU–US cooperation and a reinvigoration of international institutions. European leaders, including the European Commission, certainly seemed to assume as much. In November 2020, immediately after the presidential election, the Union produced a paper aimed at setting a new agenda for transatlantic cooperation (Joint Communication 2020), whilst the nascent Biden administration was anxious to demonstrate its credentials in multilateral cooperation, global governance and transatlantic cooperation. To quote the new president in his first foreign policy address, ‘America is back’, and, to all intents and purposes, this presaged a new era of transatlantic convergence regarding the EU, NATO, and global institutions, including a number of those exited by ‘Trump 1.0’. The changed atmosphere of United States–European interactions was perceptible in a number of areas, with new agreements, new institutions such as the EU–US Trade and Technology Council and an absence of either verbal or more material attacks on the status and standing of the Union or NATO. The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to intense cooperation in terms of both economic and diplomatic sanctions and of the broader diplomacy of European order, whilst also re-energizing the role of NATO and of bilateral military cooperation at the transatlantic level. By the time of the 2024 EU–US Summit, the declaration could say without irony that ‘we are more united than ever.’
That statement appears strikingly irrelevant in light of developments since November 2024. The election of Donald Trump to a second term in November 2024 and his inauguration as president in January 2025 created an expectation of disruption and unpredictability not only in United States–European relations but also in world order more generally. It was clear from the outset that the new (returning) president had a much more well-defined agenda than in 2017, that he intended to implement it with urgency, and that there would be a much more thorough-going pursuit of the ‘America First’ agenda proclaimed at his first inauguration, underpinned by a more systematic approach to the purging of the federal government and in particular those elements dedicated to foreign policy and international relations (Chazan 2025; Chazan and Sevastopulo 2025). The evisceration of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the imposition of punitive ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on friend and foe alike, withdrawal (for the second time) from global climate institutions and from others such as the WHO and UNESCO, added up to a revolutionary attack on established international norms and processes. For NATO’s European members, the exercise of what might be termed ‘coercive alliance diplomacy’ in US efforts to increase contributions to the alliance led to a ‘deal’ that promised to reduce US commitments whilst yielding major returns for the US defence-industrial complex. For the EU, built on foundations of international cooperation and dedicated to ideas of multilateralism and global governance, Trump’s policies were an assault not only on its assumptions about partnership with the USA, but also on its claim to broader legitimacy as an actor within the multilateral system and a guardian of important norms and institutions. The conclusion of a strikingly one-sided EU–US trade agreement in the summer of 2025 only served to underline the apparent challenge to the EU’s status and expectations, whilst the agreement of NATO members to raise their defence spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade bore witness to the ‘coercive diplomacy’ exercised by Washington over its allies (Foy et al. 2025; Ganesh 2025). In September 2025, the address by President Trump to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he attacked not only the UN itself but also European countries, and provided a further onslaught on the efficacy of international institutions in general, provided a chastening confirmation of the new world that had taken hold in only a matter of months.
The Impact of ‘Trump 2.0’
What does the new world of ‘Trump 2.0’ imply for international institutions? At one level, US policies seem to imply the final dismantling of the liberal international order, with its assumptions about the role of international law and organizations and the benefits of international cooperation. As already noted, however, the pressures on the established order had been growing for many years even before the first Trump administration took office in 2017. But the second Trump administration has a much more developed idea of the uses of power and how the US position in the world can be exploited (Belin and Dworkin 2025; Kimmage 2025). In this context, the challenge posed by ‘Trump 2.0’ is not simply to specific institutions but also to key practices associated with the established international order. International law is to be seen as an instrument of state policy, and thus as capable of reinterpretation in line with the interests of leading states; diplomacy is redefined as a form of performative process, in which diplomatic events can be presented as ‘good television’ foregrounding the presence of President Trump; international organizations are seen as dispensable in light of the needs of the United States and other major ‘powers.’
One of the first executive orders issued by President Trump mandated not only withdrawal from the WHO and UNESCO, but also a comprehensive review of all international organizations and their ability to serve US interests (The White House 2025). At the same time, funding for a wide range of international bodies was cut, partly due to reduced USAID funding and partly as part of a broader strategy aimed at the US withdrawal from international cooperation. The United Nations system, according to one commentator, was at risk of being reduced to the status of the League of Nations during the interwar period from 1919 to 1939 (Patrick 2025), and the roles of individual organizations have been attacked across a very broad front. In addition to the familiar targets of the WHO and UNESCO, challenges to the WTO, the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the UN Relief and Works Agency in Palestine (UNRWA) as part of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East have been mounted (see chapter 10 of this report). Not only is the UN system at issue: as previously noted, continuing attacks on bodies such as the Group of 7 (G7) industrial economies and regional organizations such as NATO and the EU itself have proliferated.
The impact of these strategies is not limited to the activities of the specific organizations targeted; it also extends to the expectations and strategies of a wide range of states in the global arena. In particular, it extends to the other ‘great powers’ and ‘middle powers’ within the international system. Where the US withdraws or distances itself from organizations, this can open up space for the injection of new forms of multilateral cooperation, for example in the form of Chinese diplomacy surrounding the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) or the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping which has now extended to include a range of regional powers as well as its core members (Rachman 2025). As a result, the nature and extent of multilateralism in the world arena is in a state of flux – the old order has been undermined, but a new order is struggling to be born.
For the EU, part of the impact is felt in the well-established tension between the Union’s internal politics and the external challenges posed by US policies. One of the key features of Trumpian policies is that they expose vulnerabilities and tensions within the EU: most obviously in the form of differential economic pressures arising from the erosion of international order in areas such as trade (see section 2 of this report), but also in the tensions observable between member states more or less receptive to Trumpian ideas. In the field of international institutions, the EU has been challenged to maintain its solidarity with the UN system and other global governance bodies. It has been challenged more fundamentally to maintain its commitment to multilateralism and to defend its investment in the institutions of the liberal international order, from which it derives important measures of legitimacy and leverage. The potential for marginalizing the EU’s efforts, both in Europe and on the global stage, is real as relations among a number of potentially dominant powers come to define the new world order. In this context, the capacity of EU institutions to develop strategies and support effective diplomacy becomes crucial. This insight was central to Ursula von der Leyen’s 2025 State of the Union address to the European Parliament, which focused strongly on how the Union might respond to both the challenges and the opportunities in the current conjuncture (von der Leyen 2025).
Strategies and Possibilities
How might the EU frame its responses to the challenges set out in the previous sections, with particular reference to international institutions? In her State of the Union address, President von der Leyen was anxious to underline the extent to which the EU can – and should – assert its agency in a fluctuating and potentially threatening environment. This posture is reflected, at least in part, in the three potential strategies outlined here: reflex, resistance and reconfiguration.
Reflex would primarily consist of adaptation to the new order, and in particular, the accommodation of US policy challenges. This strategy has risks attached to it – the most obvious being the danger of perceived dependency on the US, and the potential for forms of appeasement, as reflected in some of the accusations levelled at the EU–US trade agreement of July 2025. A corollary of this posture is that the EU’s agency and legitimacy in international institutions might be reduced or eliminated – a major blow to perceptions of the EU as a multilateralist and as a force for the consolidation or preservation of international institutions.
Resistance would imply the use of the EU’s position in international institutions as a means of standing up to US policies, and actively promoting alternatives to the Trump administration’s initiatives through the exploitation of ‘competitive interdependence’ or ‘competitive strategic autonomy’ as outlined by Erik Jones in chapter 5 of this report. As with ‘reflex’ strategies, there are costs and risks attached to this course of action; most obviously, the costs and risks associated with the Trump administration’s well-known tendency to punish those who stand up to it. It is quite difficult to see how the EU could avoid considerable costs if it adopted a policy of active resistance to the Trump administration, and as noted earlier, those costs would likely be unevenly distributed among member states. One of the consequences of a policy of active resistance would thus be heightened pressures on the EU’s internal policy processes, and the risk of ‘de-Europeanization’ strategies being pursued by a number of member states.
Reconfiguration is a third potential strategy for the EU in terms of its engagement with international institutions. In other words, in this strategy, the Union would develop new forms of multilateral bodies or press for the reform of existing bodies to make them more resilient in the face of pressures not only from US policies but also from the rise of new forms of multilateralism noted earlier. Such an incremental strategy would imply an emphasis on the EU’s agency within international institutions and an active attempt to shape their development in the face of challenges that are unlikely to disappear with the end of the current Trump administration. Such an ‘assertive’ or ‘creative’ multilateralism would by no means be cost-free, but it would have the virtue of coherence and consistency with the EU’s core values, as frequently stated.
Where does this leave us in respect of the three scenarios for the future of transatlantic relations outlined at the start of this volume? The disintegration of transatlantic relations has been prophesied on many occasions, and the current conjuncture suggests it is a possibility. There has undoubtedly been fragmentation during the past decade, and the danger is now more explicit than ever. But the sinews of transatlantic relations, both public and private, are robust and are likely to contain the damage at least in the medium term. It is not clear that there is scope in the near term for significant progress, as long as the challenges to international institutions reviewed here persist: quite simply, the US attack on multilateralism and the rise of multiple bilateralisms are not encouraging for the future of international institutions. Most likely, there will be at least a period of muddling through, but this should be qualified by the remarks above on strategy. Simply put, the EU has an opportunity to assert and maintain its multilateral credentials and to contribute to a creative period of muddling through, in which the resilience of international institutions is enhanced, and they are reconfigured to face a challenging new world order.
The following chapters reflect a number of these general arguments. In chapter 10, Edith Drieskens explores the enduring ambivalence of the United States towards international institutions, specifically the UN system, and assesses the EU’s capacity to replace or bypass the United States in the UN context. In chapter 11, Daniel Fiorino analyses the linkages between domestic and external policies in the USA, and the extent to which the EU might be able to promote incremental change in international environmental institutions in the absence of the United States. In chapter 12, Frode Veggeland provides a detailed analysis of the growth of turbulence around international institutions, and especially the WHO, which has been a major focus of US policies and thus a significant concern for the EU.
(*) Michael Smith is Honorary Professor in European Politics at the University of Warwick, UK, and Emeritus Professor of European Politics at Loughborough University, UK. He has published widely on transatlantic relations, American foreign policy and European Union external action; his most recent books are The European Union’s Strategic Partnerships: Global Diplomacy in a Contested World (edited with Laura Christina Ferreira-Pereira, Palgrave-Macmillan 2021), International Relations and the European Union (edited with Christopher Hill and Sophie Vanhoonacker, (4th edition, Oxford University Press 2023) and The European Union and the United States: Competition, Convergence and Crisis in the Global Arena (co-authored with Terrence R. Guay and Jost Morgenstern-Pomorski, 2nd edition, Bloomsbury 2025). Email: M.H.Smith@warwick.ac.uk
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Please cite as: Drieskens, Edith. (2026). “The United Nations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00131
Abstract The United Nations’ (UN) eightieth anniversary in 2025 was expected to be a moment of reflection and renewal, but it has instead unfolded amid profound turbulence. This chapter analyses how a series of executive orders issued by the Trump administration have triggered an unprecedented reshaping of the United Nations’ finances, operations and presence. While some settings were directly targeted for funding cuts or reconsideration of membership, the most consequential decisions were broader reviews of US engagement with international organizations and foreign aid. These developments have generated ambiguity in United States–United Nations relations: the United States remains present in most settings, yet its actions have challenged core principles and practices, pushing the organization into a reactive stance that at times borders on survival mode. The chapter further examines the implications for United States–European Union relations, revealing a widening gap between Washington’s transactional approach and the European Union’s seemingly enduring unconditional commitment to multilateralism.
Keywords: multilateralism; United Nations; UN reform; US–EU relations; US–UN relations; Trump administration
Judging by the messages that fill the card shops in my hometown of Leuven, turning 80 is a remarkable achievement, one that symbolizes strength, resilience, wisdom and perspective. It is a time to celebrate accomplishments and share the stories behind them. But legacy also takes another form when reaching 80: it is an opportunity for renewal. With the illusion of permanence falling away, this age seems to reveal a rare kind of clarity. This lucidity makes turning 80 less about becoming someone new and more about acknowledging who one truly is beneath the layers of years. In this way, it marks a life shaped by constant change, as well as a final transformation before the very last chapter closes. Similarly, the United Nations’ (UN) eightieth year in 2025 has been marked by transformation, yet turbulence has overshadowed celebration, as a series of executive orders issued by the Trump administration has pushed the organization toward fundamental, even existential, reform.
This contribution analyses these decisions and their implications for both United States–United Nations (US–UN) and United States–European Union (US–EU) relations. It shows that, while the combined impact of speed and scope has created an unprecedented situation in the post-1945 international system, these decisions are less erratic than often considered. Yes, they have destabilized the UN’s functioning in recent months and will profoundly shape its functioning in the future. However, they are grounded in a blueprint originating with the first Trump administration and informed by the broader history of US–UN relations. It also shows that, like the UN, the EU has had little choice but to muddle through this milestone because of financial constraints and the absence of consensus beneath the seemingly unconditional rhetoric of support for multilateralism.
A Milestone in Crisis
As the UN marks its eightieth anniversary, reports suggest that the transformative meaning of legacy is particularly relevant for understanding current developments, with some observers even hinting that its final chapter is unfolding as we speak. A little over a year after major ambitions were outlined at the Summit of the Future, there appears to be little to celebrate, as budgetary cuts are expected to fundamentally reshape the organization (Byrnes 2025; Lynch 2025). For some, these cuts represent a long-overdue opportunity to reform the UN, potentially leading to a more effective and efficient organization. For others, however, they signal the end not only of the UN as we know it, but of the UN itself. A striking illustration of this view comes from UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Director Tom Fletcher, who notes that 79 million people are affected by these ‘brutal cuts’, leaving the organizations involved with equally ‘brutal choices’ and effectively reducing their work to ‘a triage of human survival’ (UN News 2025). Several other UN bodies, including the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP), have announced budget cuts of 10–20% or more, affecting thousands of staff (Lynch 2025).
Whether one thinks in terms of a turning point or a breaking point, of a challenge that can be tackled or a catastrophe that cannot, the fact remains that the depth and pace of the proposed reforms are without precedent. Once complete, the UN will be very different—in what it does, how it operates and even where it is based. The situation in Geneva appears particularly strained, as its role as host to numerous (specialized) agencies seems under threat (Jefford and Langrand 2025). Indeed, as part of the ongoing system-wide review, measures under consideration range from traditional cost-cutting, such as limiting travel and freezing new hires, to the more significant step of relocating entire units to lower-cost locations (Lynch 2025). Long-established UN cities seem to be losing ground, while others, like Nairobi, are set to gain, with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women already planning to relocate their activities to the UN headquarters there. It is therefore not surprising that the mentioned reports discuss declining staff morale, strained working relations, and even demonstrations in Geneva – everything but the celebrations one might expect to mark eighty years (Blackburn 2015).
UN Reform by Force
Although the UN has faced decades of challenges, the current situation was primarily triggered by a series of ‘birthday cards’ – in the form of executive orders – signed by US President Trump in late January and early February. These decisions devote little attention to UN reform, but their combined effect has been extraordinary. Never before have so few words so profoundly reshaped this process.Some UN settings are directly targeted by these decisions. They have been explicitly targeted for reconsideration of membership and funding. All decisions in this category restore the previous status quo: they overturn those of the Biden administration, which itself had reversed decisions of the first Trump administration. More remarkable, and affecting all UN settings, have been the broader, horizontal decisions to review US support for international organizations and its approach to foreign aid.
Five settings fall within the first category, which involves naming, blaming and shaming: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The first three have been identified as entities allegedly drifting from their original missions, acting against US interests and undermining allies (The White House 2025b). UNESCO has been accused of failure to reform and address concerns over mounting arrears, as well as anti-Israel sentiment. In a similar vein, UNRWA has been accused of infiltration by foreign terrorist organizations, with some employees allegedly involved in the 7 October attack on Israel. The UNHRC has been criticized for protecting human rights abusers. And while it does not do so explicitly here, the United States has previously criticized this body for bias against Israel. The WHO has been condemned for mishandling the coronavirus pandemic, failing to adopt urgently needed reforms, lacking independence, and demanding unfair payments from the United States (The White House, 2025f). In a similar vein, the Paris Agreement has been denounced as failing to reflect US values or economic and environmental objectives, and therefore not benefiting the American people (The White House 2025e).
These effects are significant for the mentioned settings because the United States is often a key financial contributor (CFR Editors 2025). However, the greatest impact has resulted from decisions that do not target specific UN bodies, or even the UN as such. The first decision mandates a re-evaluation of the US engagement with international settings in the broadest sense, encompassing organizations, conventions, and treaties (The White House 2025b). To this end, the secretary of state was to conduct a review in consultation with the US ambassador to the UN, spanning an estimated six months. The second, and in practice even more significant, decision calls for a re-evaluation of US foreign aid to realign it with American values and interests (The White House 2025c). While a 90-day pause was ordered for evaluation, a stop-work order on foreign aid issued by the secretary of state on January 24 significantly accelerated this process, prompting various UN bodies to abruptly freeze spending and lay off workers (Lynch 2025). The reason is not only that many UN bodies are dependent on US funding, but also that these cuts have come on top of an ongoing liquidity crisis, driven by late payments – including from the United States – and declining contributions. This situation was further aggravated by the Trump administration’s challenge to existing commitments under the Rescissions Act of 24 July 2025, which retracted congressionally approved funding for 2024 and 2025.
Beyond revisiting membership and funding, the Trump administration’s retreat from the UN targets the core values and principles underpinning its work. This withdrawal has been particularly visible in relation to sustainability and diversity, equality and inclusivity, commonly referred to as DEI (Gowan 2025; Lynch 2025). While the already mentioned withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has been the most visible decision in relation to the former, there is a broader belief that the United States has entered international agreements and initiatives that do not align with the country’s values or recognize its role in advancing economic and environmental goals, redirecting public money to countries that neither need nor deserve assistance (The White House 2025e). This reassessment has led the US mission to the UN to state that the US government is no longer willing to invest in the Sustainable Development Goals, as they are inconsistent with both US interests and sovereignty. This appeal to sovereignty is quite intriguing, as the Trump administration’s territorial ambitions regarding Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal challenge the principle of sovereignty as enshrined in the UN Charter (Gowan 2025). Concerning DEI, the Trump administration seeks to reverse its predecessor’s decisions (The White House 2025g). It has made this especially clear by rejecting references to gender ideology in the Commission on the Status of Women of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), opting instead to frame discussions in terms of biological sex (The White House 2025d; United States Mission to the United Nations 2025). Further challenging the UN’s human rights framework, it refuses to take part in the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (Paccamiccio and McKernan 2025).
Implications for US–UN Relations
While the impact of the Trump administration’s decisions on the UN and its functioning is undeniably disruptive, observers find it difficult to determine what these developments mean for US–UN relations generally (Lombardo 2025). An important reason is that although these decisions suggest disengagement, the United States continues to participate actively in most UN settings. It even explicitly supports specialized (standard-setting) agencies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) (Lynch 2025). Ambiguity deepens when its president publicly challenges the UN’s relevance by mocking that it provides him only with a faulty escalator and a teleprompter, only to subsequently acknowledge the organization’s potential and confirm his full support. As such, the status quo of the relationship cannot be described, using the terminology of this report, as either moving forward or toward disintegration. The former is evident: the relationship has scarcely improved since the Trump administration took office in early 2025 and began to push back. But the latter is similarly clear. At present, disintegration, in the sense of total collapse, is more evident in the United States’ relationship with certain UN bodies than in its overall relationship with the organization. Of course, this broader relationship is challenged by the disintegration of these settings, which has served as a sobering reminder that US engagement in international organizations is conditional, and that reversal awaits if those conditions are not met.
While recognizing that things can change swiftly in the Trump administration, the status quo of US–UN relations appears to be one of muddling through, although in a somewhat different sense than the editors suggest, who refer to cooperation in policy areas where it is seen as mutually advantageous. Here, cooperation is approached transactionally by one of the partners and is sustained only when it benefits that partner’s interests (Zareba 2025). With others failing to step up quickly and decisively to fill the financial gaps created by the decisions outlined above, the UN seems to have little choice but to accept the terms of cooperation put forward by the Trump administration. These terms, which began as a blueprint during its first term, have materialized in the past few months with remarkable pace and scope, making it much more difficult to single them out, as was sometimes done in the first term in the hope of a return to business as usual after four years (Almqvist 2017; Lynch 2025). This has left the UN with only radical choices. The positive narratives of African empowerment or of UN reform for the twenty-first century through which these decisions have been presented do not alter this reality (Byrnes 2025; Khumalo 2025; Shiffman 2025).
Those surprised by the renewed focus on American interests in US–UN relations may benefit from revisiting the work of the late Edward Luck, who characterized the US approach toward the UN as one of ‘mixed messages’ (Luck 1999). His analysis reminds us that the United States has consistently played an ambiguous role in the world of international organization, alternating between supporter and critic, and that the UN particularly stands out in this regard. Reviewing this work for Political Science Quarterly, Michael Barnett even concluded that the US–UN relationship would make an ideal episode on the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show’ – one titled ‘great powers who love and abuse the UN’ – although with an important caveat (Barnett 2000, 448). It would showcase ‘a long history of hurt feelings, mistrust and grave misunderstandings’, but not the usual happy ending, as ‘the estranged pair is unlikely to reconcile’ (Barnett 2000, 448). Beyond offering historical background, Luck’s work identifies several factors that have fueled tensions in US–UN relations, many of which remain relevant today. He argues that the United States’ inconsistent stance toward international organizations stems from a deeply ingrained sense of exceptionalism, which drives domestic debates over whether national interests are advanced or undermined by engagement. As such, drivers of tension include concerns about safeguarding national sovereignty in an increasingly globalized world, suspicions that organizations may be exploited to advance agendas that conflict with US objectives, and frustration over minority positions. Yet equally significant are issues of funding, burden-sharing and oversight.
Implications for US–EU Relations
This contextualization also reminds us that even though common institutions and rules are often seen as foundational pillars of the Atlantic political order, as is the case in this report, the United States and the EU have never fully aligned in their stance toward the UN. The EU’s discourse, unlike that of the US, has always conveyed an unambiguous message regarding the UN. A commitment to multilateral cooperation, particularly within the UN framework, is deeply embedded in its identity as an international actor (Drieskens 2023). The EU’s internal structure explains why this is the case: it is the most formalized and institutionalized example of multilateral cooperation. Importantly, multilateralism remains central to its approach, even as the notion of the EU as a geopolitical actor has become more prominent in recent years. According to the EU, contemporary challenges demand more multilateralism, not less. The coronavirus pandemic prompted the EU to articulate its ambition to reinforce the multilateral system in early 2021. Likewise, in the context of its pursuit of ‘strategic autonomy’, the Versailles Declaration adopted in March 2022 reaffirms ‘its intention to intensify support for the global rules-based order, with the United Nations at its core’ (European Council 2022, 3). As such, few were surprised when, in the same meeting where the United States questioned the relevance of the UN, the EU reaffirmed its support for the rules-based international order that upholds the UN Charter in particular and multilateralism more broadly, thereby confirming its long-standing commitment to human rights and sustainability.
The EU’s continued adherence to these values led to a public rebuke by President Trump at the September 2025 General Assembly meeting in New York. The EU was called out, with even more words devoted to its failures than those of the UN (The White House 2025f). Responding rather than reacting, the EU opted to point out differences without naming the United States, stressing its own reliability and predictability (European Council 2025). In fact, it only mentioned the United States briefly in its address, without singling it out. Also, at other times in recent months, the EU’s public criticism has been mostly cautious or implicit, expressing regret and concern and reminding the United States that its decisions run counter to its own interests. As such, even if the EU has framed the situation internally as an opportunity to enhance its influence and has taken some financial decisions to address it, it has mostly acted as an observer (Sherriff 2025).
Insecurity and inability, rather than indifference, appear to have driven this public restraint, underscoring that the current EU–US relationship is not one of equals. Since the Trump administration assumed office, the EU has largely been walking on eggshells in its dealings with the US, devoting considerable effort to reducing existing tariffs and preventing new ones (Lehne 2025; Zerka 2025). This wider context of muddling through – largely rooted in fears of retaliation through tariffs or other ways, including the possible withdrawal from vital organizations such as NATO – has constrained the EU’s ability to publicly criticize the Trump administration’s dealings with the UN, leaving it with little alternative but to proceed with caution (Chadwick 2025b; Fox 2025). Financial constraints and a lack of consensus should also be mentioned here. Regarding the former, the EU has been urged to step up not only to alleviate humanitarian suffering, but also because the US decisions carry direct consequences for the EU given their close cooperation on the ground (Le Piouff 2025; Sherriff 2025). Yet stepping in to fully fill the gap left by the United States is not an option. Alternative priorities – several imposed by the Trump administration’s choices, such as the need for enhanced defence spending – mean there is little financial leeway (Chadwick 2025a; Vasquez 2025; Vinocur 2025).
Regarding the latter, it is important to recall that, given the distribution of competences within the EU on most UN matters, the ability to deliver a strong, unified response rests largely with the member states. Two challenges are important in this regard: they are not equally critical of the Trump administration, nor are they united in a maximalist commitment to the UN, with recent research confirming that engagement varies beneath the seemingly unconditional rhetoric discussed above (Blavoukos and Galariotis 2025).
Conclusion
In Charles Lindblom’s original conception, ‘muddling through’ refers to policy formulation through incrementalism, in which complex policy is developed through small, successive changes (Lindblom 1959). Grounding his argument in the context of US policy change, Lindblom contrasted this ‘branch method’ with the ‘root method’, which revisits the underlying fundamentals each time. This contribution has shown that, although the Trump administration appears to have shaken and even uprooted the foundations of the UN, the surprising element lies more in the speed and scale of its decisions than in their general direction, whether viewed in light of its first term or the broader historical context of UN–US relations. Time will tell in what form the UN will emerge from this storm.
What is clear, however, is that these decisions have left the organization with little choice but to muddle through. The same applies to the EU, which lacks the means and the consensus to calm the crisis, let alone restore normalcy. However, returning to the birthday wishes that framed this contribution, the silver lining beyond the promise of UN reform may be the clarity this turbulent period provides: neither the US–UN nor the US–EU relationship is one of equals now, nor are they likely to become so in the years to come. With this timeline in mind, the EU should recognize that muddling through may be justified as an early crisis response, but it is unsustainable if multilateralism truly constitutes a cornerstone of its identity. While the plans for UN reform remain a work in progress at the time of writing, the parameters are quite clear. They encourage the EU to evolve from branching to rooting, engaging in a substantive discussion of its commitment to the UN system, including its reliance on others to realize its multilateral goals. Maintaining credibility as a dependable actor requires confronting these dependencies decisively, whether they involve the United States or other partners. In this context, the UN’s milestone may also offer a transformative opportunity for the EU, clarifying what its multilateral commitment means in practice and how to put it into practice.
(*) Edith Drieskens is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Leuven International and European Studies (LINES) institute, where she teaches courses on international organizations, international relations theories and academic writing. Her work explores the regional dimension of global governance from a conceptual, theoretical and empirical point of view, focusing on the EU’s functioning in multilateral settings (mainly, but not exclusively) post-Lisbon (UN Security Council, UN General Assembly, UNESCO, WADA). She is co-editor of The Sage Handbook of European Foreign Policy (Sage, 2015). She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Leuven University (December 2008), as well as master degrees in Political Sciences (Leuven University, 2000), European Studies (Leuven University, 2001) and American Studies (Universities of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels, 2002). Before returning to Leuven on a full-time basis in September 2011, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague (2009–2011). Her ongoing research examines the EU as a heritage actor in international relations. Her research has appeared in a variety of international journals, including the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of European Integration, European Security, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies and Public Administration. Email: edith.drieskens@kuleuven.be
Blavoukos, Spyros, and Ioannis Galariotis. 2025. “Drivers of Differentiation between EU Member-States in the UN General Assembly.” European Journal of Political Research 64 (2): 834–50.
Drieskens, Edith. 2023. “European Integration and the United Nations.” In The Cambridge History of the European Union, edited by Mathieu Segers and Steven Van Hecke, 345–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Please cite as: Fiorino, Daniel. (2026). “The Trump Administration and Climate Policy: The Effects of Right-wing Populism.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00132
Abstract The Trump administration’s renewed withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement forms part of a wider retreat from multilateralism that has defined recent US foreign policy. Beyond exiting the Paris framework – which remains the central mechanism for global coordination on climate mitigation and adaptation – the administration has disengaged from institutions such as the World Health Organization, curtailed international assistance and launched broad reviews of US participation in global governance. Climate policy is especially vulnerable under a right-wing populist presidency marked by hostility toward multilateral cooperation and scepticism of scientific expertise. Given the United States’ role as the largest historical emitter, a major current emitter and a key actor in climate diplomacy, its disengagement has significant systemic consequences. Yet the most profound effects may arise from domestic rollbacks of emissions regulation and constraints placed on state-level climate action. For the European Union – committed to net-zero by 2050 and the world’s largest climate financier – sustained US disengagement necessitates continued autonomous climate leadership.
Keywords: climate change; populism; Paris Agreement; multilateralism; global engagement
With the arrival of the second Donald Trump administration in January 2025, a new era dawned in the foreign affairs of the United States and the world. A goal of the Trump administration is to withdraw as much as possible from multilateral institutions and problem-solving. This stance reflects a tenet of right-wing populism: hostility to working with other nations in international platforms. The United States became one of four nations not participating in the Paris Climate Agreement. This is the second time the United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. The first occurred during the first Trump administration, although President Joe Biden rejoined before the withdrawal became official.
President Trump issued Executive Order 14162 on 20 January 2025, calling for a review of ‘international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values’ as the administration defines them (The White House 2025b). As the Democratic Party-oriented Center for American Progress noted at the time, the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and other global initiatives ‘marks a stark return to isolationism at a moment when global cooperation is needed’ (Gibson 2025). What are the consequences of the United States’ withdrawal from global platforms? What, in particular, does this shift in US engagement mean for the European Union (EU)?
The withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement was part of a larger pattern. The United States also dropped participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) (Yamey and Titanji 2025), turned on and threatened traditional allies, including Canada and the European Union; eviscerated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and terminated funding for many international initiatives. The effect of all these actions, Stewart Patrick has observed, is that President Trump ‘is declaring independence from the world America made’ (Patrick 2025). The Trump global agenda reflects many of the views that foreign policy conservatives have long held dear: that multilateral institutions and agreements interfere with American national sovereignty; that international law is illegitimate and constrains freedom of action; and that countries should deal with each other bilaterally under a ‘might makes right’ framework. Part of this worldview is a disavowal of global development and creation of ‘destabilizing tariffs’ that upend decades of open trade policies. From a global sustainability perspective, this view also constitutes a ‘rejection of global public goods’ as the US government denies climate science, ignores biodiversity collapse, rejects global environmental collaboration, and declares ‘war on the Sustainable Development Goals’ adopted by the United Nations (Patrick 2025).
This chapter reviews US–EU climate negotiations, how they changed during the transition from President Biden to President Trump, the direction they are moving under the Trump administration, and the prospects for US–EU relations over the next three years. Given the position of the Trump administration on climate science (and, for that matter, on scientific expertise generally), the administration’s emphasis on developing and exploiting the fossil fuel resources of the United States, and the administration’s hostility to global engagement, it is difficult to be optimistic about the prospects for climate negotiations and the US–EU relationship more generally.
Consequences of Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
On his first day in office, as he had done at the start of his first administration, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. So far, no other countries have withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement (Crowfoot 2025), although President Javier Milei of Argentina announced that he is considering it (Gibson 2025). Otherwise, what are the effects of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement? When the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases walks away from the principal platform for addressing the global problem of climate change, there will be consequences (CRS 2025; Paraguasso and Volcovici 2025). Not having the United States participate substantively in future annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to monitor progress and set Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) is, in itself, a setback. The United States is still the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It is also the world’s largest economy and has been a formidable influence in global politics. Indeed, the system of relationships that Trump is dismantling was largely created by the United States in the years following the Second World War.
One consequence of the US withdrawal from international climate negotiations is a reduction in funding for mitigation and adaptation in developing and other countries. EO 14162, discussed earlier, ended any financial commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). On 4 March 2025, the United States also withdrew from the Climate Loss and Damage Fund, which was designed to compensate countries for climate change-related damages and to help fund adaptation. The administration is not only eliminating financial support for climate-related initiatives but also reducing assistance across the board, including humanitarian aid.
The pattern of the Trump administration is to disrupt relationships with traditional allies. The administration has not only insulted allies; it has also imposed tariffs that undermine the global economy and those of many nations, with the EU generally seen as losing in the trade agreement (FitzGerald and Geoghagan 2025). The asserted goal is to revive domestic manufacturing with high tariffs on imported goods. That is unlikely to prove effective, according to most experts. The tariffs have been directed especially at China, which the administration sees as the United States’ principal economic and military competitor. They have also been directed at many other countries.
Jennifer Lind and Daryl Press (2025) see an effort to refocus American resources on China as at least part of the motivation for this strategy of global disengagement. The catch is that this effort to refocus on China, which the administration perceives as the primary global threat to US primacy, could cede the role of international technology and economic leader to the Chinese government. Certainly, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement risks ceding global climate leadership to the EU and China if it aspires to play that role. Combined with the significant reductions in climate, scientific and other research, these actions put the United States at a disadvantage relative to China in the coming decades.
Yet the main effects of Trump’s actions, at least in the short term, may be in the domestic policy arena (Brown and Stevens 2025). Before November 2024, assuming the continuation of Biden’s climate mitigation policies, the United States was likely to meet the goal of a 50–52% reduction in emissions by 2030 relative to a 2005 baseline. The tax credits and incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (enacted in 2023) and the Investment and Infrastructure Jobs Act (passed in 2022) were expected, if implemented, to get the United States most of the way toward that goal. Efforts at the state and local levels, supplemented by corporate and other actors, could have carried the United States the rest of the way toward that goal (King et al. 2024). With Trump’s reversal of provisions in those laws and a range of other domestic policy changes, that emissions reduction goal is now out of reach.
The Trump administration not only set out to reverse legislative and other policy changes taken by its predecessor; it also declared an ‘energy emergency’ to justify and facilitate the further development of fossil fuels (The White House, 2025a). This executive order claims that US energy capacities ‘are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs’. In a dig at wind and solar generation, it asserted that the country had come to depend on ‘a precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply, and an increasingly unreliable grid’ (The White House 2025b). Among the measures outlined in the executive order were expanding oil and gas production on federal lands, facilitating the production of corn-based ethanol, and removing regulatory barriers to expanded fossil fuel infrastructure from laws such as the Clean Water Act (enacted in 1972) and the Endangered Species Act (enacted in 1973).
In addition to declaring an ‘energy emergency’, the Trump administration has taken steps to promote the expansion of fossil fuels, which are the principal source of greenhouse gases. In an order titled ‘Unleashing American Energy’, it committed to expanding fossil fuel production on federal lands, including the outer continental shelf; stated an intent to eliminate what it called the ‘electric vehicle mandate’ in order to ‘promote consumer choice’, proposed to eliminate ‘unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived market distortions that favour electric vehicles (EVs) over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase’, and directed officials ‘to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances’, a threat to revise federal product energy efficiency standards (The White House 2025c). In a direct challenge to the scientific consensus on climate change, the Trump administration has also proposed to overturn the ‘endangerment finding’ that underpins authority granted in the Clean Air Act (Joselow and Friedman 2025). If this effort succeeds, it will not only directly affect vehicle emission standards but also undermine the legal basis for future administrations’ climate mitigation actions.
Even state-level policies are being threatened. Using authority granted under the Congressional Review Act, the Republican-controlled Congress and the president revoked the California waivers issued by the Biden administration, allowing the state to mandate zero-emission vehicles. First included in the Air Quality Act of 1967 and later incorporated into the Clean Air Act in 1970, the State of California has the legal authority to set stricter motor vehicle standards than the federal government. In 1977, amendments to the Clean Air Act extended that authority to other states wishing to adopt more stringent California standards, which more than a dozen states have adopted. The administration wants to revoke that authority as part of its defence of the fossil fuel industry. California and other states are challenging this decision in court (Rosenhall and Friedman 2025). California has been especially aggressive in its climate policies.
Prospects for the US–EU Relationship
The long-standing collaborative relationship between the United States and the European Union is particularly fraught in the light of these developments. President Trump is unlikely to be persuaded to change course regarding multilateral institutions and agreements. This view is firmly ingrained in the Trump administration’s worldview. The United States is out of the Paris Climate Agreement (CRS 2025). Some in the administration are even calling for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), although that would require ratification by the US Senate and would be more difficult. The EU’s strategy is to ‘wait it out’ while continuing to exercise international climate leadership, as it has for years. The EU should continue to make an economic and security case for mitigating emissions and for strategically adapting to the impacts of climate change. Renewable energy is the most efficient way to generate electricity in most of the world; the environmental, economic and national security benefits are compelling. Energy innovation delivers more jobs per unit of investment, provides economic benefits to national and regional economies, improves air quality and contributes to global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The public policy case for committing to a clean energy transition is strong.
The case for EU climate leadership is compelling (Zito 2024). The European Commission views climate change as an existential threat. It aims to be the ‘first climate-neutral continent’ and has committed to a net-zero-emission economy and society by 2050, relative to 1990 levels (European Commission 2025a, 2025b). The EU has an Emissions Trading System covering 40% of emissions, which recently expanded to include aviation and maritime sources (European Commission 2025c). It has adopted an intermediate goal of a 55% reduction in emissions by 2030, with a 90% target for 2040. The EU adopted a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and is (alongside the member states and the European Investment Bank) the largest source of funding for developing nations. The EU has set targets for carbon removals for 2030. Although progress toward net-zero was recently deemed ‘insufficient’, it has adopted goals and is making more progress than any other group among developed economies. It plays a leading role in the annual Conferences of the Parties to the UNFCCC, and the EU actively participates in efforts to implement the Paris Agreement (Zito 2024).
The EU has been a global climate leader and must continue to play that role. Although it has experienced difficulty in cutting emissions, as all countries have, it has made as much or more progress than any other part of the world. Indeed, in the most recent ‘Climate Change Performance Index’, which compares countries across a range of mitigation indicators, EU members held 11 of the top 20 positions (CCPI 2025). Although some experts are calling for a suspension of democratic norms and procedures in light of the urgency of the problem, the research suggests (although not uniformly) that democratic systems, like most in the EU, are better at mitigating emissions than more authoritarian states (Fiorino 2018).
The United States is balanced between two competing coalitions: one accepts the need for climate action; the other rejects it. US policies are also evenly balanced, with about half of the states preferring progressive policies to mitigate emissions and the other half avoiding them. The pattern in midterm congressional elections is for the party of the sitting president to lose seats in the US House of Representatives; the Senate is harder to predict. This pattern, combined with President Trump’s low approval ratings, makes it likely that Democrats will gain a majority in the House in 2026. And of course, there is a new presidential election in 2028. Exercising its leadership on climate change may be the EU’s best strategy over the next few years. Following this approach is arguably the most sensible way to ‘wait out’ the Trump presidency.
With this administration unlikely to change its views on climate change or on multilateral commitments, the best course for the European Union is to continue to exercise climate leadership, to muddle through and hope for a more favourable US position on climate change and on multilateral problem-solving.
(*) Daniel J. Fiorino is a Distinguished Executive in Residence and Director of the Center for Environmental Policy in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He teaches courses on environmental and energy policy and public policy approaches to sustainability. He is the author or co-author of eight books, many of which have been recognized with national or international awards. His most recent books are the Clean Energy Transition: Policies and Politics for a Zero-Carbon World (Polity Press, 2022) and A Good Life on a Finite Earth: The Political Economy of Green Growth (Oxford University Press, 2018). He also was the lead editor of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Climate Policy, published in 2024. Before joining American University in 2009, he served in a variety of management and analytical positions at the United States Environmental Protection Agency. His PhD is in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University. Email: dfiorino@american.edu
Yamey, Gavin and Boghuma K. Titanji. 2025. “Withdrawal of the United States from the WHO—How President Trump is Weakening Public Health.” The New England Journal of Medicine 392 (15): 1457–1460.
Zito, Anthony R. 2024. “European Union.” In Daniel J. Fiorino, Todd A. Eisenstadt, and Manjyot Kaur Ahluwalia, eds. Elgar Encyclopedia of Climate Change, pp. 429–433. Edward Elgar.
Please cite as: Veggeland, Frode. (2026). “Turbulence in the World Health Organization: Implications for EU-United States Cooperation during a Changing International Order.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00133
Abstract This paper examines the World Health Organization (WHO) within the broader context of the post-1945 liberal international order. It begins with a brief historical account of the establishment and development of WHO, emphasizing its role as a central institution for global health governance. Particular attention is given to the role of the European Union’s (EU) member states and the United States (US) in supporting the WHO through financial contributions, personnel secondments, crisis assistance and capacity-building measures. The paper then explores more recent developments, notably the US withdrawal from the WHO during the first and second Trump administrations and the termination of key US aid programs. Finally, the implications of this withdrawal are analysed, both for WHO’s operational capacity and for transatlantic relations, with consequences for challenges such as the global fight against HIV/AIDS, antimicrobial resistance, drug and vaccine development and emergency preparedness.
Keywords: World Health Organization; United States; European Union; COVID-19; public health emergency; International Health Regulations
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been the key coordinating authority in global health governance within the post-Second World War liberal international order. Both the United States and Europe have been important supporters and contributors to the WHO. However, the future of both the WHO and the transatlantic partnership is currently uncertain. This paper explores the WHO’s evolution and its recent crises, focusing specifically on the United States’ notification of withdrawal. It further analyses what these events mean for the future of transatlantic cooperation.
The Establishment and Development of the WHO
The WHO was established in 1948 as a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). The World Health Assembly, comprising all 194 member states (soon reduced to 193), is the supreme decision-making body and determines the organization’s policies and priorities. The assembly also appoints the director-general. The executive board facilitates the work of the assembly, provides advice and gives effect to its decisions and policies. It is composed of 34 members that are technically qualified in the field of health and represent the WHO’s regional offices: the Regional Office for Africa, the Regional Office for the Americas, the Regional Office for South-East Asia, the Regional Office for Europe, the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Regional Office for the Western Pacific. The WHO’s main objective is ‘the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health‘ (World Health Organization 1946, art. 1), which is to be achieved by, among other things, the core function of acting ‘as the directing and co-ordinating authority on international health work‘ (World Health Organization 1946, art. 2(a)).
The WHO was seen as a major achievement in the evolution of international health institutions, thanks to its expertise and willingness to address intractable health problems (Youde 2012, 29). However, early on, the WHO’s reputation began to decline, reaching a low point in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was heavily criticized by member states and in public discourse for being too bureaucratic, ineffective and corrupt. Nevertheless, at this point the WHO could also point to some very successful initiatives in its effort to improve global health – including the eradication of smallpox (Brown et al. 2006; Yamey and Titanji 2025).
The organization resumed much of its authority as a prominent and leading force in international health work under the leadership of former Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998–2003), resulting in more action, such as finalizing negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the rebuilding of capacities for addressing HIV/AIDS, and a more prominent and visible presence on the international stage. Thus, even though the WHO’s role was still contested, some of the organization’s reputation was rehabilitated, paving the way for its continued role in global health governance (Brown et al. 2006).
The United States played a central role in the development of the liberal international order after the Second World War, which included the establishment of a multilateral framework comprising numerous international agreements and organizations, including the United Nations (Hopewell 2021; Lake et al. 2021; Hylke et al. 2024). The United States also played a key role in the WHO, not least as the largest financial contributor for much of the organization’s history. The member states of the European Union (EU) have also been active supporters of and contributors to the WHO, through financial support, personnel secondments, crisis assistance and capacity-building measures. In 2020, when the United States withheld some of its funding, the member states were collectively the largest donors to the WHO. The EU itself is not a member of the WHO and did not engage actively with the organization for a long time, even though a framework for cooperation between the two organizations has been in place since 1972 (with subsequent revisions), based on a series of exchanges of letters.
Recently, and particularly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU has shown much more interest in the WHO (European Commission 2010, 2025; European Union 2022). There are several reasons for the delayed EU interest in the WHO. First, health policy has been (and still is) primarily the competence of the member states, which limits both the scope and form of health cooperation in the EU. Second, cooperation on health issues was not politicized and put high on the EU agenda until the 1990s onwards, when a series of health and security related crisis – such as the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as ‘mad cow disease’), the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and swine flu emergencies, and the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland in 2010 – contributed to raise the attention towards the need for collective preparedness and action (Greer and Jarman 2021; Brooks et al. 2023). Third, it was not until the 1990s and 2000s that the EU treaties provided a legal basis for the EU to more actively supplement and assist member states in health policy. Prime among these are article 152 of the Amsterdam Treaty (the ‘public health’ article), renumbered as article 168 in the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, article 222 of the Lisbon Treaty (the ‘solidarity clause’) – which ‘requires the EU and Member States to collectively assist any Member State affected by a terrorist attack or a natural or man-made disaster’ – and the Charter of Fundamental Rights (including the right to life and the right to healthcare) which gained equal status to treaty law in 2009 (Ekengren et al. 2006; Brooks et al. 2023).
Partly because of this specification of the EU’s role in health, the European Commission issued a document in 2010 signalling a more active role for the EU on the international stage in health cooperation. Regarding the relationship with the WHO, the document stated: At global level, the EU should endeavour to defend a single position within the UN agencies. The EU should work to cut duplication and fragmentation and to increase coordination and effectiveness of the UN system. It should support stronger leadership by the WHO in its normative and guidance functions to improve global health. The EU should seek synergies with WHO to address global health challenges. It should decrease the fragmentation of funding to WHO and gradually shift to fund its general budget (European Commission 2010, 6).
In line with the intentions stated above, the EU delegation in Geneva (where the WHO headquarters are located) began coordinating common positions on WHO matters among the EU member states in 2010 (Bergner et al. 2020, 3).
Thus, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, health policy had already moved higher up the EU’s political agenda, as reflected in earlier initiatives to strengthen transatlantic health cooperation with the United States. The agreement on mutual recognition between the European Community and the United States of America was set up in 1999 (Official Journal of the European Communities 1999). The agreement lays down the conditions under which the EU and the United States will accept conformity assessment results (e.g., testing or certification) from the other party’s designated conformity assessment bodies. In this way they can show compliance with each other’s requirements, essentially by replacing double testing with mutual trust. The 1999 agreement covered (through sectoral annexes) pharmaceutical goods manufacturing practices (GMPs) and medical devices. Other technical health areas were later included, such as inspections of manufacturing sites for human medicines in their respective territories, which were fully implemented in 2019. The Global Health Security Initiative was set up in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Delegations from the United States and the European Commission (as well as from EU member states) were included in this initiative.
The WHO was allowed to meet as an observer in the Global Health Security Initiative. In 2009, the EU and the United States created the Transatlantic Taskforce on Antimicrobial Resistance to address the urgent, growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance. Negotiations between the United States and the EU on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) began in 2013 (Khan et al. 2015). These negotiations included extensive plans for transatlantic cooperation on health issues, including health services, pharmaceuticals, and other health-related regulatory matters (Jarman 2014).
However, these negotiations were abandoned when Trump became president in 2016 and in April 2019 the EU declared that TTIP was ‘obsolete and no longer relevant‘ (Council of the EU 2019). Following the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the EU and the United States issued a joint statement in the fall of 2022 urging the strengthening of transatlantic cooperation on health, particularly in the context of health emergencies. In 2023, the EU–US Health Task Force was set up to prioritise three avenues for cooperation: combating cancer, addressing global health threats, and strengthening the global health architecture. These initiatives were launched during the Biden administration. The election of Trump in 2024 for a second term has raised new questions about the future of global and transatlantic cooperation on health, in general, and the role of the WHO in these efforts, in particular.
Turbulence in the WHO: Funding, Crisis Management and US Withdrawal
Even though the WHO’s authority was partially restored in the early 2000s, the organization continued to experience turbulence. Ansell and Trondal (2017, 4) identify three aspects of turbulence that are relevant here. Turbulent organizations refers to factors embedded within organizations, such as factional conflicts, staff turnover, funding, conflicting rules and internal reforms. Turbulence of scale appears when actions at one level of authority or scale of activities affect actions at another level or scale. Thus, what appears to be a ‘good‘ solution at one level might be considered a ‘bad’ solution at another. Turbulent environments speaks to factors external to organizations, such as crisis, rapid technological change, protests and partisan conflict. Here, attention is directed towards three challenges creating turbulence: the fragmented funding of the WHO, the handling of the Ebola disease outbreak in West Africa in 2014–2016, the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent notification of the United States to withdraw from the organization, first in 2020 and then again in 2025.
WHO Funding
The WHO’s funding comes from two primary sources: assessed contributions (i.e., membership dues paid by member states) and voluntary contributions from member states and non-state actors. Assessed contributions enable the WHO to prioritize and allocate resources to measures and activities considered most effective in fulfilling the organization’s mandate. Voluntary contributions are typically earmarked for the donor’s preferred project, which does not guarantee that the resources will be channelled to where they are most needed. The more the WHO depends on voluntary contributions, the less freedom of manoeuvre it has to fulfil its mandate.
Over time the share of assessed contributions to the WHO has been reduced in favour of voluntary contributions. In the mid-1980s, the share of voluntary contributions had almost caught up with the regular budget, which consisted of assessed contributions (Brown et al. 2006, 68). In the 2014–2015 budget 77% came from voluntary donations – these were, moreover, heavily dependent on rich donors such as the Gates Foundation and the United States (Gostin 2015, 6). In the 2022–2023 budget, the share of assessed contributions was only 12.1% of the WHO’s total revenue, whereas the share of voluntary contributions was 87.5% (KFF 2025, 8).
This fragmentation of funding and shift towards earmarked voluntary contributions has created problems for the WHO’s ability to fulfil its mandate, as priorities and policies are set by the World Health Assembly. In contrast, the larger share of the budget has been controlled by the most powerful donors of voluntary contributions (Brown et al. 2006). The assembly – in recent times, numerically dominated by poor and developing countries – is only in a position to control the use of the regular budget, consisting of assessed contributions. This situation has created turbulence within the organization, raising concerns about the WHO’s independence from internal and external actors and its capacity to follow up on prioritized health areas and thus achieve its objectives. Moreover, the possible withdrawal of the United States means that the WHO loses its historically largest financial contributor. Therefore, other states can fill this void.
The Ebola Outbreak 2014–2016 and the Call for Reform of the WHO
The Ebola epidemic outbreak in West Africa in 2014–2016 was ‘one of the largest, most devastating, and most complex outbreaks in the history of infectious disease‘ (Park 2022, 1). The outbreak put the WHO’s designated role in the global health response system to a severe test – according to many observers, a role that the WHO failed to fulfil (Gostin 2014, 2015; Park 2022). The WHO headquarters was criticized for responding too late to the outbreak, for placing too much responsibility on the Regional Office for Africa, and for hesitating to respond amid political and religious pressures in the affected countries. According to the International Health Regulations (IHR) – a binding agreement administered by the WHO – the WHO director-general has the exclusive power to declare a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), a mechanism that triggers a coordinated international response. During the Ebola outbreak the director-general did not declare a PHEIC until five months after the Ebola virus began to spread internationally and a long time after receiving warnings about the urgency to act, from local experts as well as from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Doctors Without Borders (Park 2022).
The WHO’s handling of the Ebola outbreak drew heavy criticism and calls for reform. The reform proposals included: increasing the WHO budget and shifting the budget towards assessed contributions, empowering the director-generalat the expense of the regional offices to ensure that the WHO speaks with one voice, and to exert the WHO’s constitutional authority as a normative organization by setting an ambitious agenda for negotiation of health treaties and voluntary codes (Gostin 2015). Some reforms were implemented, such as the creation of the Health Emergencies program, a Contingency Fund, and a dedicated global emergency workforce to be deployed rapidly to outbreak zones, the improvement of how the WHO assesses and communicates risks, strengthening of the implementation of the IHR and the enabling of rapid activation of research and development activities during epidemics to help fast-track effective tests, vaccines and treatments for subsequent outbreaks. Having established these initiatives, the WHO was assumed to be better prepared for the next international health emergency.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Subsequent Withdrawal of the United States from the WHO
The COVID-19 pandemic was a massive health and societal crisis, which showed how an infectious disease can spread around the globe in weeks, killing millions of people, as well as having devastating consequences economically and socially, and seriously setting back sustainable development (Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response 2021). The pandemic also underscored the importance of international cooperation in combating the virus, including the development and availability of vaccines and other essential medical countermeasures. The WHO played an important role in managing the pandemic – by declaring the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus a PHEIC, by assisting affected countries with knowledge, equipment and personnel, providing recommendations and advice on health measures, coordinating surveillance and control, and by its joint leadership of the multilateral efforts in the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative to develop and manufacture vaccines and to guarantee fair and equitable access to these vaccines all around the world.
However, the WHO’s role during the pandemic was met with mixed evaluations. Central to the negative assessments were that the director-general could have declared the PHEIC earlier (a PHEIC was declared 31 January 2020 – one month after the coronavirus was identified), that the WHO was too soft on China, that the COVID-19 outbreak should have been declared a pandemic earlier (it was declared a pandemic by the WHO on 11 March 2020), that the communication of public health measures as well as the risks related to the virus were inconsistent, and that the system for funding was insufficient. The WHO received positive evaluations, particularly for its efforts to develop and make vaccines available – an effort that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – as well as for its technical guidance and ability to deliver hands-on support to affected states.
One of the harshest critics of the WHO in recent times has been the United States (Chorev 2020; Yamey and Titanji 2025). On 14 April 2020, President Trump announced the suspension of United States contributions to the WHO pending an investigation into the organization’s alleged mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic (The White House 2020). In a letter to the WHO’s director-general dated 18 May 2020, Trump criticized the organization for sounding the alarm too late when the coronavirus was identified, for having a ‘China-centric’ bias and failing to hold China to account, and for providing inaccurate or misleading information (The White House 2020). He also cited the vast difference between the United States’ contributions to the WHO and China’s. Moreover, the WHO’s general advice against travel restrictions was heavily criticized – advice that basically reflects the IHR’s general discouragement against broad travel bans as well as the scope and purpose of IHR (article 2), which says that a public health response to international spread of disease should avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade. In the letter, Trump delivered an ultimatum: make necessary reforms, or the United States would redraw its funding permanently and reconsider its WHO membership: “It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China. My Administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste. That is why it is my duty, as President of the United States, to inform you that, if the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization. I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests,” (The White House 2020, 4).
On 6 July 2020, President Trump announced that the United States would formally withdraw from the WHO, effective 6 July 2021. The Biden administration suspended notification of a withdrawal in 2021. That same year, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response published its evaluation of pandemic management. The report included praise and criticism of the WHO and called for several reforms, including ’strengthen[ing] the independence, authority and financing of the WHO‘ (Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response 2021, 48). In line with the intentions of strengthening the global health framework, two sets of negotiations were initiated. In December 2021, talks on a new WHO Pandemic Agreement were launched. The goal was to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response globally. In May 2022, negotiations on revising the IHR were initiated. These were based on the same goal. Then, on January 20, 2025 – on the day of his inauguration – President Trump once again notified that the United States would withdraw from the WHO, effective one year later (The White House 2025). In this letter, he repeated the criticism he made in 2020. The withdrawal was met with intense criticism and warnings about the long-term health consequences, both globally and in the United States (Horton 2020; Yamey and Titanji 2025). The negotiations and revisions to the IHR were finalized and adopted on 1 June 2024. After finalizing negotiations in April 2025, the WHO adopted the new Pandemic Agreement on 14 May 2025. The United States will not be part of either.
We can summarize turbulence in the WHO in a few brief words.The WHO has experienced severe turbulence in the last decades. Some of the turbulence has been caused by internal factors, such as funding (turbulent organization) and questions about decisions at different administrative levels, including the director-general, the Head Office, and the regional offices (turbulence of scale). Even more serious turbulence, however, has been caused by external factors, where the political situation in the United States and its withdrawal from the WHO stand out as pivotal (turbulent environments).
Implications for EU–US Cooperation on Health
The United States has been central to the development and operation of the WHO for much of the organization’s history. The EU did not engage actively in the WHO until the early 2000s, and particularly after 2010 – reflecting the parallel strengthening of the EU’s general engagement in health policies. The EU’s increased support for international health cooperation can also be seen in connection with the EU’s role as a ‘soft superpower‘ (Meunier and Milada 2018). This role implies gaining influence internationally through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or military force, by means of ‘soft measures‘ such as humanitarian aid and health assistance in capacity-building and knowledge-building. Health cooperation can thus be used as both ‘soft’ and ‘smart’ power to advance foreign policies (McInnes and Lee 2012, 54–55).
In 2022, the EU published its new Global Health Strategy, signalling its intention to play a more active role on the international stage and to provide strong support for the WHO and other multilateral organizations (European Union 2022). The report states that global health is an ‘essential pillar of EU external policy, a critical sector geopolitically and central to the EU’s open strategic autonomy‘ and that ‘the EU intends to reassert its responsibility and deepen its leadership in the interest of the highest attainable standards of health based on fundamental values, such as solidarity and equity, and the respect of human rights‘ (European Union 2022, 4). The strategy also points to the need for ‘a new focus to maintain a strong and responsive multilateral system, with a World Health Organization (WHO) at its core which is as sustainably financed as it is accountable and effective‘ (European Union 2022, 7). Two of the strategy’s guiding principles emphasize the importance of international institutions. Guiding principle 14 states the support for ‘a stronger, effective and accountable WHO‘ and lists several prioritized actions the EU will take, such as seeking “formal EU observer status with full participation rights as a first step towards full WHO membership, contribut[ing] to making the financing of WHO more sustainable, advanc[ing] WHO reform to strengthen its governance, efficiency, accountability and enforcement of rules, and strengthen[ing] the WHO’s focus on its normative role in areas of global relevance,” (European Union 2022, 21).
Furthermore, guiding principle 16 states the general intention to ‘ensure a stronger EU role in international organisations and bodies’ (European Union 2022, 22). The EU also signals its intention to use a ‘Team Europe’ approach to follow up on the Global Health Strategy. Team Europe brings together a variety of relevant actors, such as EU institutions, member states and their diplomatic networks, financial institutions and other relevant organizations, to strengthen coordination, coherence and complementarity of actions and ensure the EU’s influence and impact.
Thus, in recent decades, there has been a paradoxical development in the positions of the EU and the United States towards global health governance in general and the WHO in particular. Whereas the EU has engaged more actively and stated strong support for the WHO and other multilateral organizations, the United States has retracted from international organizations and agreements, thus prioritizing attempts at using its power to gain influence through unitary action and bilateral agreements (Hopewell 2021; Lake et al. 2021; Hylke et al. 2024; Flint 2025). This retreat from the liberal international order implies abandoning the recognized relevance and authority of common values, ideas and norms, which have been incorporated into and are an essential part of this order since the Second World War.
The question of the consequences of the United States’ retreat for the transatlantic relationship thus arises. Is the relationship breaking down, or is it being renewed? Or is it ‘muddling through’ by adjusting cooperation based on issues seen as mutually advantageous? To make such assessments, it is necessary first to analyse the kinds of changes we are witnessing in the approaches of the EU and the United States to international health cooperation. In this context, two sets of concepts are relevant: bilateralism vs. multilateralism and transactionalism versus reciprocity (Keohane 1986; Bashirov and Yilmaz 2020; Flint 2025).
Table 12.1: Ideal types of approaches to international cooperation
Bilateralism
Multilateralism
Transactionalism
Zero-sum games outside of international institutions (Approach 1)
Zero-sum games within international institutions (Approach 2)
Reciprocity
Plus-sum games outside of international institutions (Approach 3)
Plus-sum games within international institutions (Approach 4)
Reciprocity here refers to the principle of mutual exchange and equal treatment, often involving shared values and long-term cooperation. At the same time, transactionalism is a pragmatic, short-term approach focused on immediate, tangible gains in a zero-sum ‘give and take’ scenario. Reciprocity implies a relationship built on mutual respect and consistent, predictable behaviour where cooperation is assumed to serve the interests of all (‘plus-sum game’). In contrast, transactionalism views relations as a series of discrete, one-off ‘deals‘ in which each party seeks to maximize its immediate benefit, often with no expectation of future cooperation beyond the current exchange. It is important to note that the approaches presented in Table 12.1 represent ideal types; in practice, states may use one or more approaches, or a combination of them, in different settings and at different times.
Approach 1 refers to a state`s emphasis on using its power to achieve (asymmetrical) bilateral agreements with short-term gains. The approach implies a lack of support for international institutions and unpredictable cooperative relationships, where common norms and values are downplayed in favour of relative gains. The Trump administration’s approach, particularly in its second term, shares many of these characteristics.
In Approach 2, international institutions are viewed as powerful tools for enforcing a state’s will on others. The approach is based on the precondition that powerful states can dominate and control the international institution at stake. The United States arguably used this approach in the early years of the global trade framework established in 1947 with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor institution, the World Trade Organization, established in 1995. Here, the United States used its powers to dominate the shaping of the rules and operation of the framework in favour of specific national economic interests.
Approach 3 refers to the idea of mutual gains through broad long-term cooperation outside of multilateral institutions. The close relationship between the EU and Norway and (until recently) between the United States and Canada can illustrate this approach.
Approach 4 refers to the core idea of a liberal international order: that states should be governed by agreed-upon legal and political international institutions and norms, rather than solely by power or force, and that such international cooperation may serve the interests of all. Here, possible short-term losses from international commitments are assumed to be offset by long-term gains. This approach has received sufficient support in the post-Second World War period, including from the United States, so that a predominantly liberal international order has been maintained to date. This order has been characterized by a multitude of international organizations and agreements, as well as successive multilateral negotiations, which have provided binding national commitments across a wide range of issues – from trade and health to human rights and climate and environmental protection. However, as stated earlier, this order is now under severe pressure.
Based on the developments in global health cooperation described above, the EU and the United States have arguably moved in opposite directions regarding their approaches to international cooperation. Whereas the EU has become a more vigorous defender of multilateralism, seeking to play a more active role in international organizations, the United States has abandoned multilateralism in favour of bilateralism. The US withdrawal from the WHO, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Paris Agreement on climate change, as well as the Trump administration’s circumvention of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules through its trade policies, are just a few examples of this. Moreover, whereas the EU emphasizes reciprocity and shared norms and values, Trump has clearly moved the United States further towards transactionalism.
Returning to the consequences for the transatlantic relationship of the United States’ retreat from multilateralism, the question arises: How are transatlantic relations changing under the Trump administration? Three scenarios are possible, and I will describe each in turn below.
Scenario 1: A possible strengthening of the transatlantic relationship.One scenario suggests that the transatlantic relationship may move forward and be strengthened in the face of global uncertainty and common challenges, threats and needs. Clearly, there is currently little to support this scenario. When it comes to transatlantic cooperation within the framework of global health governance, we first and foremost see a decline. There were attempts to strengthen health cooperation from the late 1990s onwards. Some of these – such as the TTIP negotiations – while others succeeded, such as the global health security initiative and the EU–US task forces for health and for antimicrobial resistance (AMR). However, the US withdrawal from the WHO means that the United States has put itself outside the EU’s view of the core pillar of global health cooperation. This approach affects the WHO’s operations and also spills over into transatlantic cooperation, for example, by putting many projects relevant to this cooperation at risk, including humanitarian aid, the fight against HIV/AIDS, and the fight against AMR. The potential to strengthen transatlantic cooperation on health is also undermined by the Trump administration’s general bilateral and transactional approach to international cooperation, its withdrawal from multilateral agreements and organizations that the EU strongly supports, and its frequent shifts in positions and policies toward other countries. In addition, the harsh and distrustful rhetoric of President Trump against the EU does not help, as with his claims, for example, that the EU is a ‘foe on trade‘ (BBC 2018), that it ‘was set up to take advantage of the United States‘ (Politico 2018), that it ‘was formed to screw the United States‘ (France 24 2025), and that it ‘is, in many ways, nastier than China‘ (Axios 2025). Such rhetoric does not serve as a sound basis for a trustworthy, strengthened cooperative partnership.
Scenario 2: Maintain the transatlantic relationship by ‘muddling through’. This scenario suggests that the transatlantic partnership will ‘muddle through’ geopolitical and domestic challenges through functional adjustments, while maintaining cooperation in areas seen as mutually advantageous. Some minor developments could support such a scenario – for example, that cooperation has continued to progress in technical and less political areas of health, such as mutual recognition of conformity assessment. However, the overall transatlantic relationship has been seriously damaged by the Trump administration’s approach, which clearly limits the adjustments that can be made. First, the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO puts many WHO-initiated cooperative projects involving both the United States and the EU at risk. One example is the combat against AMR. Second, many cooperative health projects depend on long-term commitments from involved parties to have any effect. The short-term, unpredictable approach of the Trump administration thus creates significant risks for engaging bilaterally with the United States on such projects. Third, much of the transatlantic cooperation on health is based on mutual trust, including technical cooperation such as mutual recognition of conformity assessment. Such trust has clearly been reduced in recent times.
Scenario 3: The disintegration of the transatlantic relationship. Following the assessments of the two other scenarios, recent developments clearly show a decline and disintegration in the transatlantic relationship. Two developments are particularly important in this context. First, the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO – and from other multilateral arrangements – makes it a less relevant partner for the EU, which prioritizes cooperation through the WHO (and other multilateral institutions). Second, the Trump administration’s seemingly abandonment, or at least serious downplaying, of international law and common norms and values, such as human and democratic rights, clashes with the norms, values and principles emphasized by the EU. Third, the Trump administration’s performance on the international stage, including its stance against the EU, makes it a less reliable partner – thereby creating high political risk for entering long-term commitments with the United States.
Responding to the Turbulence: Four Recommendations for the EU
The United States’ withdrawal from the WHO creates a void in influence and authority that others can fill. The EU can contribute to filling this void by:
1. Continuing to support and prioritize the WHO and speed up contributions to strengthen the WHO’s independence and financial situation. This can be achieved by contributing to maintaining and strengthening the EU’s role as a ‘soft superpower’ using health to advance foreign policy aims.
2. Building ‘coalitions of the willing’ within the WHO to strengthen the organization, influence and develop the global health agenda. Experiences from major transboundary crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as the wear and tear on transatlantic cooperation under the Trump administration, have revealed vulnerabilities in Europe and the need to reduce the EU’s dependence on other countries.
To address these challenges, the EU needs to:
3. Strengthen its ability to ensure health security and continue to prioritize strategic autonomy in the health area.
4. Downplay transatlantic cooperation on short- and medium-term commitments and avoid long-term commitments.
This way, political risks related to (health) cooperation can be reduced. The strain on the transatlantic partnership and the question of whether the United States can be considered a reliable partner reflect an uncertain, high-risk situation for the EU. A pragmatic approach is thus needed, where the EU leverages mutually beneficial transatlantic ties while simultaneously developing supplementary and compensatory strategies.
The EU should therefore:
5. Strengthen bilateral health cooperation with like-minded partners, including Canada, non-EU countries in Europe and other trustworthy countries.
Implementing these recommendations would go a long way toward ensuring that the EU retains the ability to exercise independence in health policy and responses to global health emergencies in the long term.
(*) Frode Veggeland has a PhD in political science from the University of Oslo and has published extensively on the EU, international organizations, regulatory governance, public administration and food and health policies, including crisis preparedness and crisis management. In 2006, he was Head of the Secretariat of the Governmental Commission that investigated the E. coli O103 outbreak in Norway. In 2021–2022, he was part of the Secretariat of the Norwegian Corona Commission, which investigated the government’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022–2024 he was part of the Secretariat of the government-appointed committee that reviewed Norway’s experience of cooperation under the EEA Agreement and other agreements Norway has had with the EU over the past ten years, including cooperation on civil protection and health preparedness. Email: frode.veggeland@inn.no
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US President Donald Trump held a campaign rally at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2024. Photo: Chip Somodevilla.[/caption]
