Hippopotamuses are baffling. At first glance, these creatures look calm, slow, and placid as they wallow lazily in muddy pools. Looks, however, can be deceiving. Survivors of hippo encounters tell of the unpredictable, ferocious charges that make hippopotamuses the deadliest wild mammal on earth, killing around 500 people each year. (That’s 23 times more than lions.) Humans have few good options to defend against 6,000 pounds of erratically charging hippo. Negotiation is not much of an option—it is hard to stop a hippo with offers of food. Experts advise that the best strategy is to avoid hippos altogether. If all else fails, then playing dead can be a reasonable Plan B.
Since the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House in January, European leaders have been confronting a charging hippo situation. U.S. policies are unpredictable, fast-changing, and often baffling. No one knows whether Trump is about to charge or let go. Negotiation rarely works, not least because it is hard to find out what he ultimately wants.
Not all hope is lost, though. As I argue in a new policy brief for the European Council on Foreign Relations, European Union policymakers can sketch a coherent, pragmatic, and coolheaded response to Trump’s attacks on trade, investment, and financial issues. To stay focused and maintain their cool as they try to manage Trump, EU leaders should channel their inner naturalists and draw five lessons from hippo encounters in the wild.
First, get your facts straight about what you’re facing.
Safari tour guides smile when they hear their clients say that they could outrun a hippo: The creatures can charge at around 20 miles per hour, which even trained athletes would struggle to match. In the same vein, a sounder grasp of facts would come in handy in Europe these days—for instance, to tame the uproar that followed the conclusion of the U.S.-EU trade deal in July.
According to a poll in Le Grand Continent, 77 percent of European respondents believed that the United States was the biggest winner from the deal. They are wrong. Tariffs are import taxes paid by U.S. firms and consumers. Of course, some EU exporters will lose U.S. market share because of the tariffs. Yet economists calculate that the hit on the EU’s collective GDP will be minimal and that the United States is the biggest loser from the measures.
A better grasp of facts also would have helped Europeans to dismiss the alarming headlines about the deal. Take EU pledges to invest $600 billion in the United States. This does not entail spending European taxpayers’ money in the United States, as some European politicians have claimed. The figure is only an estimate of the sum of already planned corporate investments on U.S. soil, over which the European Commission has zero say.
A similar reality check applies to EU promises to import $750 billion worth of energy from the United States by 2028. Experts agree that the pledge is moot, as U.S. oil and gas firms have nowhere near the export capacity to achieve this goal, unless they swiftly abandon their global customers and divert all their shipments to the EU.
Nine months into Trump’s second term, Europeans would be in a better place to defend against a charging Trump if they get their facts straight.
Second, resist the urge to fight back.
Responding with force to a disgruntled hippo is useless; if the animal wants to charge, then attacking it in return is a sure way to self-harm. Such insights are relevant for Trump encounters. The popular idea that the EU should impose retaliatory tariffs on its imports from the United States falls into a similar category of self-harm.
It bears repeating that tariffs are taxes paid by the firms and consumers of the country imposing the tariffs. Economists from the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimate that retaliatory tariffs from the EU on imports from the United States would roughly double the economic hit on Europe by 2030. In other words, retaliation against Trump’s charges would amount to self-inflicted pain.
Third, discover unlikely strengths.
Humans lack the speed and strength to win a head-on fight with a hippo. However, they have other aces up their sleeves, such as the ability to play dead. Similarly, the EU could leverage one its best assets for Trump management: the bloc’s well-earned reputation for being boring, predictable, and dull. (Sorry, Brussels.) At some point, Trump—who thrives on drama and attention—could find EU bureaucrats too boring to engage with over trade.
As an added bonus of a play-dead strategy, companies around the world crave boring predictability. That makes Europe a more attractive place to invest when U.S. policies are so contrastingly erratic. To survive volatile Trump assaults, it’s high time that the EU uncovers its own underappreciated strengths.
Fourth, stay together.
The old leadership mantra that cohesive groups survive better under duress applies in the bush: If safari-goers scatter into the wild when a hippo decides to charge, their chances of survival plummet. The same holds of Europe’s dealings with an unpredictable United States.
Trump has never made a secret of his hatred of the EU, which he believes was born to “screw the U.S.” He would be particularly pleased if EU institutions were no longer able to negotiate trade matters on behalf of member states because panicked EU capitals all rushed to ink bilateral deals with Washington.
To avoid that scenario, don’t be France. The reaction by Paris to the U.S.-EU trade deal shows that such a scenario of disunity is not far-fetched. In July, then-Prime Minister François Bayrou denounced the deal as “submission” and complained that France had been “a bit alone” in defending EU interests.
Funnily enough, France was particularly active behind the scenes in trying to water down the list of U.S. goods that the EU had initially considered for retaliatory tariffs. Paris was adamant that bourbon whiskey, largely made in staunchly Republican U.S. states, should not appear on the list for fear of U.S. retaliation against French cognac. Note to the EU’s other 26 members: To survive Trump’s charges, don’t follow France’s example.
And finally, learn to let go of what you cannot control.
Negotiation is rarely an option in the savannah—there is no point trying to talk sense to hippos. In the same vein, EU policymakers need to give up hopes of convincing Trump to abandon his fixation on tariffs.
For starters, the U.S. president sees these levies as his go-to tool for political leverage—for instance, to push the EU to curb economic ties to China or help engineer a depreciation of the U.S. dollar. In addition, Trump believes that the U.S. trade deficit is an issue that tariffs can fix, even if economists vehemently disagree. It is a shame, but it is also a reality that Europeans need to live with. Perhaps the secret to survival and true strength lies with letting go of trying to tame the wild.
Nine months into Trump 2.0, European policymakers continue to struggle to sketch a sensible response to Trumponomics. Perhaps this is because nonsensical aggression does not necessarily call for a direct response. With straight economic facts, a self-help-oriented mindset, and the willingness to let go of trying to control the uncontrollable, such a conclusion appears much more clearly.
In the meantime, the savannah advice stands: It’s always best to stay away from the hippos.
The post Europe’s Hippopotamus Strategy for Handling Trump appeared first on Foreign Policy.
