European leaders followed a careful playbook when President Trump visited Scotland over the past five days.
They pushed, but delicately and only so much, toward greater involvement in causes important to Europe. They flattered. And, above all, they avoided criticizing him in public.
Using that strategy, developed over months of trial and error, European leaders engaged in a delicate push-and-pull with Mr. Trump, who had threatened to abandon Ukraine and NATO and to shut off American markets from Europe, claiming the European Union was “formed in order to screw the United States.”
And they had some success. E.U. leaders agreed to a trade deal that many view as giving Mr. Trump too much and that the French see as a major retreat, but they were able to nudge the American president into dropping his most severe tariff threats. They were also able to coax changes from Mr. Trump, at least for the moment, on issues they consider crucial. They cajoled him into a pledge of more aid for the starving children of Gaza and induced him to take a more aggressive stance toward President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which included cutting down the time Mr. Trump had allowed the Russian leader to end his invasion of Ukraine.
The Scotland meetings, held at Mr. Trump’s golf courses, capped off a surprising run in recent weeks in which European leaders have persuaded Mr. Trump to both embrace military support for Ukraine and to remain involved in NATO, after other countries increased their financial contributions.
“They’ve kind of figured out how to handle Trump, and so, six months in, I think one could say that the relationship between the United States and Europe is much better than anybody expected three months in,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. “That having been said, nobody knows what Trump’s going to do tomorrow.”
Apart from those in Hungary, citizens in most of Europe have a dim view of Mr. Trump. But most of their leaders have learned how to avoid the worst outcomes for their countries.
The meetings this week between Mr. Trump and European leaders were diplomatically upside down. Tradition dictates that when an American president arrives in a foreign country, it is the nation’s leader who hosts. But because Mr. Trump owns two golf courses in Scotland — and because the president enjoys being the dominant figure in any media event — it was Mr. Trump who played host, and as such, he often seemed at ease during the talks.
The setting allowed the president to highlight parts of his personal business, as he is prone to do on foreign trips. In this case, that included lavishing praise on a new ballroom at the course in Turnberry during what was otherwise official business, raising conflict-of-interest questions.
But the more pressing matter for European leaders, in an acknowledgment of American might, was to draw Washington back into world affairs.
Mr. Trump’s inclination has long been to withdraw from the world. He dismantled U.S.A.I.D., which provided critical aid to many places, including Gaza. And as hunger reached crisis levels in the enclave, Mr. Trump had as recently as Sunday said that suffering there was “not a U.S. problem, it’s an international problem.” By Monday, he acknowledged people in Gaza were starving.
European heads of state appear to have learned from past blowups that Mr. Trump has had with the leaders of Ukraine and South Africa that it is not wise to try to challenge him or correct him in public, even if his ideas are factually incorrect.
This weekend, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, repeated Mr. Trump’s favorite phrases back to him. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain presented him with evidence of starvation in Gaza. Both praised his prowess as a negotiator and a leader.
In some ways, they were following a road map laid out by Mark Rutte, secretary general of NATO, for how to deal with the unconventional and mercurial American president.
After the United States struck nuclear facilities in Iran, Mr. Rutte sent a private text to Mr. Trump hailing “your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary,” a text that Mr. Trump promptly made public.
Mr. Rutte also referred to Mr. Trump, at one point, as a “daddy” breaking up two children fighting. In a change of heart, Mr. Trump, who once called NATO “obsolete,” declared the organization that provides for a unified defense was “no longer obsolete.”
To be sure, Mr. Trump has also forced Europe’s hands on major issues. The trade deal struck with Brussels on this trip is no favorite among many European leaders, and countries in NATO were earlier forced into greater contributions.
In France, Prime Minister François Bayrou said of the trade deal that it was “a dark day when an alliance of free people, brought together to assert their values and defend their interests, resigns itself to submission.”
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and an ally of Mr. Trump’s, mocked the European Union, of which he is a member: “It was Donald Trump eating Ursula von der Leyen for breakfast.”
But others see the leaders of Europe as having managed Mr. Trump away from his most aggressive impulses. Mr. Trump had threatened to apply a 30 percent tariff on imports from the continent, starting on Aug. 1.
Perhaps in a move to smooth negotiations with Mr. Trump, Ms. von der Leyen accepted his premise on key points of trade relations and echoed back some of the president’s most calcified thoughts on trade deficits, even if those are rejected by traditional economists.
“We have a surplus,” she said, a distinction many economists say is a poor metric to judge the quality of a trade relationship but one that has been a focus of Mr. Trump’s. “The United States has a deficit, and we have to rebalance it,” she added.
Alan O. Sykes, a professor of law at Stanford who specializes in the application of economics to international law, said that Ms. von der Leyen “may be kind of stroking his way of thinking about things to get in favorably with him.”
Even so, there were moments that could have led to acrimony.
At one point, Mr. Starmer attempted to (gently) challenge Mr. Trump over his view of London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, with whom the American president has a long-running feud.
As Mr. Trump told journalists at Turnberry that the mayor was doing a “terrible job,” Mr. Starmer spoke up and said, “He’s a friend of mine.”
Mr. Trump did not strike back, though, and a detonation was averted.
Meredith Crowley, professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, said that Britain’s leaders had done a good job of building rapport with Mr. Trump.
“I was always struck that Britain seemed to me a bit clever, where right at the beginning, when they first started to go through negotiating their problems, King Charles came out and invited Trump to Balmoral,” she said, referring to the Scottish Highland home of the royal family. “That seems like that created a sort of amount of good will that Britain will come through this just fine.”
One seeming success: Mr. Starmer’s trade deal with Mr. Trump locked in lower tariffs for many goods (10 percent) than the European Union obtained.
Professor Kupchan, of Georgetown, said that while Europe had fared reasonably well in the era of Trump, its leaders were wise to begin planning for other options. He noted that Britain, France and Germany had begun discussions about a mutual defense pact without the United States.
“If all goes well, the trans-Atlantic link continues on for the foreseeable future,” he said. “But Europeans have no option but to begin to plan for, to think about, and confront the alternative: That is, Europe alone.”
Michael D. Shear contributed reporting from London.
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
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