“BRUSSELS -- President Trump and his team have spent much of the year railing at Europe, complaining about what they see as a cluster of countries too soft on immigration, weak on preserving democratic freedoms and unwilling to pay for the full cost of their defense.
Their biggest target, though, is the European Union. The U.S. helped create the institution from the wreckage of World War II, but Washington now regards it as an over-regulated bureaucracy incapable of responding swiftly to events and fulfilling its role as a U.S. ally.
Trump's antipathy to the bloc represents the most fundamental reassessment of U.S. trans-Atlantic policy since the Cold War and is upending America's most important alliance. Administration officials say they are trying to strengthen the West and put a wayward Europe back on track.
The position, most recently articulated in Trump's new national-security strategy, hews to a longstanding MAGA criticism of the bloc as a supranational body squelching national character and initiative. Vice President JD Vance, a vocal proponent of the view, helped launch the administration's push in February with a speech in Munich, where he referred to EU officials as "commissars," using a title for Soviet officials.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer earlier in December threatened the EU with tariff hikes or other trade action if it doesn't stop imposing fines on American tech companies, days after the bloc levied a $140 million penalty on social-media platform X. An EU spokesman said the bloc's rules apply equally and fairly to all companies that operate in it.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday the U.S. would bar a former EU official from entering the country over his role in creating and enforcing an online-content law that the administration has criticized for allegedly censoring Americans.
By targeting the EU -- also a longtime focus of Russian vitriol -- Trump is dispensing with decades of U.S. policy and putting the West in uncharted territory.
For European leaders, however, the EU -- with some 450 million consumers and a combined economic heft of more than $20 trillion -- is key to their nation-states' ability to defend themselves and exert force on the world stage. They acknowledge the 27-country bloc is unwieldy but see it as a defender of European sovereignty. The EU is also now working to lighten regulatory burdens that European companies say hurt their global competitiveness, although results aren't yet clear.
"Europe's independence will depend on its ability to compete in today's turbulent times," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the bloc's executive arm, in her annual State of the EU speech in September. "But we know the economic and geopolitical headwinds are strong," she said.
Still, EU officials reject U.S. criticism of European democracy. Many view the attacks as based on American commercial self-interest.
"There will be no freedom of speech if citizens' freedom of information is sacrificed to defend the tech oligarchs of the United States," said European Council President Antonio Costa, who oversees the grouping of EU national leaders, in response to the national-security document.
For many Europeans, including former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, the EU -- far from being a problem -- offers the best hope for jump-starting their lagging economy. By deepening economic ties among members, the argument goes, the bloc might finally achieve the efficiencies and scale its vast market has long promised but failed to deliver.” [1]
Draghi is right about the EU market fragmentation. There is no common market in the EU. Regulations are splitting the market into small parts for the firms. There is only colonial system. Western European countries are able to flood the rest of EU with lowest quality Western stuff without tariffs and use slave work force of the rest of the EU as they wish, including rampant sexual slavery.
Mario Draghi's 2024 report on European competitiveness indeed highlights market fragmentation as a major issue hindering the EU's growth and innovation. He argues that the Single Market remains incomplete, with persistent national barriers in areas like services, capital markets, energy, telecoms, and digital sectors. These barriers prevent firms from achieving scale, raise costs, and limit the EU's ability to compete globally with the US and China. Estimates in the report and related analyses suggest fragmentation costs the EU around 10% of potential GDP, due to issues like differing national regulations, "gold-plating" of EU rules, and uneven enforcement.
National regulations do create divergences: while the Single Market eliminates tariffs and quotas on goods, technical standards, professional qualifications, and administrative requirements often vary, leading to compliance burdens for cross-border firms. This can effectively split markets, particularly in services (which face higher effective barriers than goods). Draghi and others (e.g., the Letta report) call for deeper harmonization to address this.
The EU Single Market is like a "colonial system." Disparities persist—Eastern wages remain lower, attracting investment but also fueling migration westward. Critics from dependency theory perspectives argue this creates a "core-periphery" dynamic, where Western firms benefit from cheaper Eastern labor and markets, while profits flow back West. Structural funds and cohesion policy aim to counter this, though unevenly.
Claims of Western countries "flooding" the East with "lowest quality" goods need more research; product standards are harmonized EU-wide, and safety rules apply equally. Lower-priced goods may reflect cost and quality differences, not just quality dumping.
Human trafficking and sexual exploitation are serious crimes across the EU, with sexual exploitation accounting for about 44% of registered trafficking cases in 2023 (Eurostat data).
Victims often come from poorer regions (including Eastern Europe and non-EU countries like Ukraine or Nigeria), and exploitation occurs in wealthier Western destinations (e.g., Germany, Netherlands, Italy). This is driven by poverty, conflict, and organized crime.
Overall, the Single Market has boosted EU GDP by 9-12% on average. Draghi's recommendations focus on reducing barriers for pan-EU scale and competitiveness.
1. World News: Trump Upends U.S. Policy by Attacking European Union. Michaels, Daniel. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 29 Dec 2025: A7.
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