Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission may try to sell the situation as a success. negotiation of the trade agreement between the EU and the US Trump's, but it's obvious to everyone that 15% tariffs are too big a deal to try to disguise the suspense, even when the starting point was 30% tariffs and the threat of a ruthless trade war. It's not a success (it's a failure) because, once again, Europe is bowing to the demands of a US president who is openly anti-European and anti-Atlanticist. These demands, moreover, are arbitrary (Trump announces tariffs whenever and wherever he wants, displaying the behavior of a petty Caesar who imposes his will everywhere) and which have much more to do with the desire to frighten and humiliate adversaries than with correcting any supposed historical grievances Europe has had against the US. What Trump signed this weekend in Turnberry, Scotland, between a golf club and a blow, is not a trade agreement: they are the terms of blackmail, subject to revision at the whim of the blackmailer.
Little Caesar was the nickname of the gangster Enrico Bandello, played by Edward G. Robinson in the 1931 film of the same name. A few months ago, at the beginning of this term, one of Trump's repulsive lieutenants (now I don't know if it was Hegseth, Vance or Rubio) warned that he had brought back "the sheriff" in the same. The reference was wrong: in the imagery it was intended to evoke, the sheriff could be a criminal who had conveniently gone over to the side of the law (like Jason Coburn in Pat Garret and Billy The Kid), or the personification of integrity in the face of corruption and (even worse) of silence conniving with corruption (the Gary Cooper of Alone in the face of danger). But Trump is neither. He's much more like the gangster who sells protection to his victims. Whose protection? Protection of himself: If you don't pay me, I'll take down your business and beat the shit out of you. These are the terms on which Trump negotiates, as has been seen with both Japan and Europe.
Europe's splendid role becomes pitiful in the face of the genocide in Gaza, in which Trump is the resolute supporter of Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing, while Europe does something worse than nothing: appears hesitant, cowering, divided, and, ultimately, irrelevant. Irrelevant in the face of crimes that are precisely the reasons for which the European Union was created, irrelevant in a matter in which Europe cannot afford or forgive its irrelevance. The European Union's raison d'être is to maintain a space of peace, prosperity, and progress among its member states, and to intervene in international politics to project these same objectives to the rest of the world. This is what makes Europeanism still meaningful. It loses it when Europe remains silent in the face of atrocity and goes about its business, signing whatever the gangster dictates, while trying to normalize the far right in its daily internal affairs.
