Well, well, well. For all the people clutching their pearls about Donald Trump “destroying the global economy” with his trade agenda, Monday’s showdown with the European Union was the opposite: a blowout win for Trump. And let’s be honest — this one’s going to sting in Brussels for a long time.
This was supposed to be the big fight, the one where Trump’s tough talk about tariffs finally blew up in his face. But instead? The EU walked in expecting a gentleman’s chess match, and Trump played a New York street fight. The results? The EU folded like a cheap umbrella in a hurricane.
I’m generally a staunch defender of the economics profession but the fact that an 80 year old reality show star and his ragtag crew of like 5 alabama university undergrads are running circles around 10 thousand PhDs for a year now does raise some questions one cannot ignore pic.twitter.com/jHq0qOJJDL
— yung macro 年轻的宏观 (@apralky) July 28, 2025
Here’s the headline: The EU drops tariffs on U.S. goods while swallowing a 15% tariff on most of their exports. They commit to buying $750 billion in U.S. energy products over three years (bye-bye, Russian leverage). They pledge $600 billion in direct investment into the U.S. economy. Oh, and Trump gets a win on steel quotas, autonomy on food negotiations, and big gains on tech, pharmaceuticals, and aircraft. Even defense spending — though not formally part of the deal — tilts our way because NATO allies are still living in Trump’s “pay up or else” shadow.
No wonder the Europeans are sulking. France’s prime minister called it a “dark day for Europe.” A Belgian parliamentarian tweeted a pathetic “What happened, Europe?” What happened is they got schooled.
GERMAN ECONOMY MINISTER: EU IS CURRENTLY NEGOTIATING FROM A POSITION OF WEAKNESS, WE MUST CHANGE THIS
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) July 29, 2025
And the beauty of it? Trump didn’t just win concessions — he crushed a narrative. For months, the Financial Times and others mocked his approach as “TACO” — Trump Always Chickens Out. The theory was that Trump talks tough but backs off when things get serious. Not this time. He followed through, and the EU discovered they weren’t negotiating with Mitt Romney.
Even EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed Trump’s own rhetoric about trade imbalances when asked what concessions America gave up — her answer: none. Zero. Nada. That’s not just a deal. That’s domination.
This is absolutely extraordinary and beyond parody: pic.twitter.com/EURtXsP44f
A reporter rightly asks Von Der Leyen “What are the US concessions? What is the US giving up in the deal”
VDL’s reply is that there was none because “the starting point was an imbalance, a surplus on…
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) July 28, 2025
For all the critics who said Trump was diminishing U.S. power on the world stage, this agreement screams the opposite. It’s pure Theodore Roosevelt: speak loudly, swing the big stick, and walk away with what you want.
