The European Union, overcoming deep dissension among its members, gave the green light to a sweeping trade pact with four South American countries on Friday that would create one of the largest free-trade zones in the world, connecting markets with more than 700 million people.
The agreement offers a stark contrast to the amped-up aggression on display this week from the Trump administration. As Europe worked to extend an era of economic collaboration, the United States, its once-close ally, demonstrated that it preferred coercion over cooperation.
In Brussels, European leaders negotiated and revised rules to win agreement. Across the Atlantic, President Trump authorized military raids to oust Venezuela’s president and capture two tankers, as part of a plan to seize billions of dollars worth of Venezuelan oil. He then doubled down on threats to Colombia, Cuba and Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory.
To some degree, Mr. Trump’s confrontational approach and embrace of trade wars helped seal a deal between the 27-member European Union and four South American nations in the trade bloc known as Mercosur that had languished for a quarter-century.
Indeed, countries across the world have stepped up efforts in the past year to sign trade partnerships that do not include the United States.
Mr. Trump’s policies were helping “to create a world without America,” said Robert Z. Lawrence, a professor of international trade and investment at Harvard. And “it’s not only in trade,” he added.
Other countries, for example, have continued to gather for Group of 20, health and climate summits even though the United States did not participate.
“In the short run, Trump is able to impose his will,” Mr. Lawrence said, “but is he building a lasting basis on which America can interact with the rest of the world?”
The European Union’s agreement with Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, as well as Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay was long opposed by agricultural interests and environmentalists in Europe.
Critics argued that South American producers did not meet European standards on pesticides, deforestation, animal treatment and worker rights. Farmers, particularly chicken and beef producers, have been worried that cheap imports would undercut their livelihoods.
On Thursday, French farmers driving tractors forced their way through police barricades and blocked roads around the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe in Paris to protest the Mercosur agreement.
European carmakers and pharmaceutical manufacturers in Germany, Spain and elsewhere, though, have been eager to access Mercosur’s huge market. Bolivia, which recently joined the bloc, will eventually become eligible to participate in the deal.
Aiming to persuade Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and other skeptics, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, offered last-minute concessions, including early access to 45 billion euros ($52 billion) in agricultural aid.
On Friday, it was clear the strategy worked. France, Poland, Austria, Ireland and Hungary reiterated their opposition to the blockbuster trade pact, according to diplomats familiar with the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly. Belgium abstained. But Italy’s support provided the necessary majority. Ms. von der Leyen plans to travel to Paraguay next week to formally sign the agreement.
The European Parliament will also have to approve the treaty.
“Our message to the world is this: Partnership creates prosperity, and openness drives progress,” Ms. von der Leyen said in a statement. At a time when the “transactional nature of the reality we live in becomes increasingly stark,” she added, the agreement was “further proof that Europe charts its own course and stands as a reliable partner.”
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, said in a statement that it was a “historic day for multilateralism.”
The accord is set to cut tariffs on European products exported to South America and on South American goods shipped to Europe. Proponents have argued that the agreement will also provide access to a source of critical raw materials aside from China.
The deal will be signed by a government run by a close ally of Mr. Trump’s, Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, and another run by a frequent antagonist, Mr. Lula of Brazil. And it involves a region of the world that Mr. Trump considers a backyard of the United States that should be managed and dominated by Washington.
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood — and we will protect it,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in November, defending the administration’s bombing of boats that it said were transporting drugs.
Since then, that has expanded to include control of some of the continent’s natural resources and economies. Mr. Trump said this week that the United States would “run Venezuela,” and vowed to seize 30 to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil and control the proceeds from the sale.
The new policy, called the “Donroe Doctrine,” is an update of President James Monroe’s 1823 pronouncement that was aimed at curbing European influence in Latin America.
This is “the most bellicose version of the Monroe Doctrine,” said Greg Grandin, a historian at Yale who has written extensively on Latin America.
The administration’s recent National Security Strategy explicitly states that the United States intends to make “it harder for non-Hemispheric competitors to increase their influence in the region.” Whether a free-trade pact with Europe would, in the administration’s eyes, fall into that category is unclear.
China’s economic and political interests in the region, though, certainly do.
China is South America’s biggest trading partner. Chinese loans and investments have financed the building of bridges, ports and energy infrastructure. And more than 20 countries in the region have already signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
In May, President Xi Jinping of China announced another $9 billion line of credit for the region during a gathering in Beijing with officials from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Brazil is also a partner of the BRICs group, which includes China, Russia and India.
But China’s industrial subsidies and relentless export policies are evidence that Beijing is not interested in abiding by international free-trade agreements any more than the United States is, said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Brussels.
For countries like Brazil that want trading partnerships based on open markets and guided by legal agreements, “Europe is kind of the only game out there,” Mr. Kirkegaard said, “because neither the two other big economies are interested in the rules at all.”
Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels.
Patricia Cohen writes about global economics for The Times and is based in London.
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