US-Europe Ties Could Suffer With Trump’s Return, Former Swedish Government Official Says

European collaboration with the U.S. on trade-related policies and other issues likely will become more difficult when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, a former Swedish government official said Nov. 7.

The first Trump administration displayed “isolationist” tendencies, said Ann Linde, who was Sweden’s minister of foreign affairs from 2019 to 2022. Heading into a second term, “now they are much more prepared, so I think they will double down on this real aversion about global, international cooperation.”

Linde, who's now special adviser on foreign affairs at the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), made her comments at an event co-hosted by FEPS and the German Marshall Fund.

Another speaker, Charles Kupchan, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, said Trump will approach foreign policy more as a deal-making real estate mogul than as a statesman. “There will be none of the sticky, taken-for-granted quality that [President Joe] Biden brought to the Atlantic alliance,” he said.

Trump’s plan to increase tariffs (see 2408140058) could cause a “blowing up of the integrated global marketplace” if he follows through with it, Kupchan said. However, “Trump may be ready to cut deals here and there, which may avoid the onset of the fragmentation of the global economy,” Kupchan added.