Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Delhi, India.
Is Europe prepared for a Trump presidency?
And that's of course the big issue around every capital of Europe. There are two major issues and concerns.
One of them, obviously, the Russian war against Ukraine. What will be the US policy? Trump has promised to make peace within 24 hours. That's not going to happen. Putin is determined to continue this particular war. What would be the consequences then? Is Trump going to throw Ukraine under the bus, abandon support and thus abandon de facto concerns for the security of Europe? How would Europe react to that big issue?
Second big issue, tariffs. Trump has said that tariffs is the word that he loves most of all words. And he said that he's going to impose 10, 20% tariffs on all imports and far more on imports, of course, from China. That's going to have hugely negative effects for the global economy, also for the European economy, US economy and everyone else. What's going to be the European reaction to that? Counter tariffs or trying to line up with other global trade actors to preserve as much as we can, open up a big global trading system? Huge issues. No answer until by January 20th we know what the Trump administration is going to do. One conclusion, fairly obvious; we better buckle up.