BRUSSELS — An eye for an eye.
That, in essence, is the playbook the European Union should follow in responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war, according to Belgium’s new Foreign and European Affairs Minister Maxime Prévot.
The American leader’s derogatory remarks about the EU along with subsequent U.S. measures “must lead us to react with similar vigor,” Prévot told POLITICO. The bloc must demonstrate that its market of 450 million people “deserves to be treated differently” than Trump has done so far, he said.
Prévot, a Walloon centrist who led his party, The Committed Ones, to big gains in Belgium’s elections last June, is one of the power players in the country’s seven-week-old center-right government under Prime Minister Bart De Wever.
In responding to Trump the European Union shouldn’t take anything off the table, including hitting Washington where it hurts, Prévot said.
“We know that, among the sectors likely to bring the greatest sensitivity and responsiveness [from the U.S.], there is the whole digital component. And so personally, I’m more in favor of also using this lever as part of the battery of counter-fire measures,” he said.
The bloc’s tech regulation has been caught up in the transatlantic tariff war, with Trump threatening to retaliate against the European Commission’s enforcement of EU tech rules on content moderation and digital competition.
Social media platform X, owned by Trump’s high-level adviser Elon Musk, is facing a first-ever penalty after it was deemed in a preliminary finding last summer to be in breach of EU social media rules.
Triggering the EU’s never-used anti-coercion instrument should also be an option, Prévot said. The tool, designed in the wake of Trump’s first term, allows for broad retaliation in response to trade discrimination, such as quotas and tariffs or restrictions on foreign investment.
“This war, particularly on tariffs, is like a boomerang being thrown,” he said. Those using tariffs are “forgetting that [the boomerang] is coming back.”
His remarks come as cracks have started to appear in the bloc’s unity in how to respond to Trump’s erratic tariff threats. Faced with early criticism from France, Germany, Ireland and Italy, the European Commission was forced to broaden its consultations with EU capitals in the lead-up to imposing tariffs on €18 billion of U.S. exports, a move that ratcheted up trade tensions with Washington.
Buy European
It’s all grist for Trump’s mill. The U.S. president sat down with national leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas was snubbed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hasn’t visited Trump yet.
That approach doesn’t surprise Prévot. “The vision Donald Trump is pursuing is eminently bilateral,” Prévot said. Trump prefers to see the world through one-on-one meetings, while von der Leyen and Kallas are the “embodiment of multilateral types,” the Belgian minister said.
The rumblings of Trump’s isolationist policies are being felt in Belgium, too. The new Belgian government in early February set the goal of reaching NATO’s target for national military spending of 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2029. But that target already feels outdated, and the government is looking to accelerate spending further.
Belgium’s willingness to invest more in defense will be tested in the next few weeks when it considers the possible procurement of new fighter jets. The new government promised in its coalition agreement to pour more money into warplanes, but stopped short of specifying which ones.
The country previously signed a contract for more than 30 U.S.-made F-35s, but such deals have been under the spotlight recently amid worries that Washington could limit their performance, and wider concerns about overreliance on American weapons.
Prévot said Belgium might be too small a country to operate a fleet with different types of fighter jets, but didn’t rule out turning to a European alternative.
“I believe that everyone should now be in favor [of buying European],” he said. “But honesty forces us to say that while the principle should guide all our investments, we must also be clear-eyed.”
It will take time and money for Europeans to boost their own defense industries and open new production lines, he said. “That’s where the purely practical dimension comes up against the ‘Buy European’ principle.”
Laura Kayali contributed reporting.
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