Trump wins, Europe trembles

Such an uncontested victory, both in terms of delegates and the popular vote, together with the victory in the Senate and the probable maintenance of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, gives the leader of the still most powerful country on Earth enormous room for manoeuvre. 

As he has already announced in his first speech as election winner, Trump is going to ‘fix the borders and everything that's wrong’. It is clear that the flow of illegal immigration, which had soared during the four years of the Biden-Harris tandem, will undergo a radical cut, which will obviously affect relations with the neighbouring Mexico of the ultra-left Claudia Sheinbaum and, by extension, with Central American countries and those closest to the Isthmus of Panama, starting with the Venezuela of the Madurist usurpers. 

In our vicinity, that is to say in the European Union, the shock is brutal, except for its current rotating president, the Hungarian Viktor Orban, and the leaders of the ultra-conservative formations, with the Italian Georgia Meloni at the head. 

Since the EU has not done its homework on several chapters that are fundamental to its very existence, once it has been deprived of the American protectorate, it will have to hurry to take the necessary decisions, otherwise it will eventually implode. 

Let us start with its own security. It will have to decide once and for all whether to take care of itself or remain at the mercy of a grown Vladimir Putin, for example, deciding to test the resilience and sustainability of a Europe that is no longer a priority for a United States ruled by Donald Trump. Needless to say, Ukraine will soon have the opportunity to see whether the thousands of dead and wounded it has put in to defend itself against Russia, but also to preserve freedom and other EU values, are rewarded by the EU with more than just fine words and procrastination when it comes to defending the common future. Investing in security and defence is therefore imperative for a Europe that Trump has already put in front of its own mirror. 

As for the economy, it is a given that Trump will keep his promise to make his country much more prosperous, which in this case will mean trying to do so even at the expense of the prosperity of others. The tariff war is therefore on and the EU will have to decide, and soon, whether it will continue to sit back and lose ground in a new world, or whether it will re-industrialise and invest massively in the leading sectors from whose leadership it has slipped. 

All this will mean brutal cutbacks. It will be up to each of the governments of the EU-27 to decide how to implement them in their own areas and to choose whether to form majorities that are committed to the future, even at the cost of great sacrifices, or whether to persist in the politicking of division, polarisation and short-termism. In other words, whether they prefer to allocate huge budgets to subsidies, canonies, chiringuitos, advisors and mamandurrias, or whether they want a society that truly prospers, which can only be achieved on the basis of merit and effort. 

The European institutions and governments will necessarily have to change their perspective. The so-called ‘walls’ and ‘cordons sanitaires’ to increasingly large sectors of the population that do not agree with the postulates of a left wing absorbed by its most extremist wing will have to be attenuated or disappear, unless some persist in their determination to stain European soil with blood, in whole or in part, once again. 

The EU, like much of the rest of the world, must also make haste to establish a common policy towards an Africa whose turbulence is throwing thousands of migrants every day into a Europe that persists in trying to stem such a wave with clearly insufficient national solutions. And either they do it together, or they will continue to surf on defunct imperial pasts. 

Further east, Trump's triumph in the United States is being taken as his own by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, coinciding with the US elections, had no qualms about dismissing his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for confronting him on the progress of the Gaza war and the rescue of the hostages still held hostage by Hamas. Netanyahu, as he had amply demonstrated, refused to give Biden a ceasefire in Israel's war against Hamas and Hezbollah, despite nearly twenty trips by his secretary of state, Antony Blinken.

And, finally, the most important global issue is to be found in Asia. For Trump (as it surely would have been for Harris), the centre of global concern is the Indo-Pacific region. The economic, commercial and military supremacy struggle with China will inexorably intensify, which will also mean for the rest of us mortals to take one side or the other, because the lukewarm or presumed neutrals run the serious risk of being overwhelmed by one or the other. 

The birth of the new international order that Moscow and Beijing were already advocating will therefore be replicated in the United States. Trump does not disdain this fight; there is his bet on Elon Musk as the symbol of this new world. But, by all accounts, it seems that the design of this new order is diametrically different if it is imposed by the Beijing-Moscow axis or if it is established by Washington with the allies that join it. And, with Trump, it also seems that ‘Wokism’, which has poisoned the soul and identity of what we used to call the West, is regressing when it comes to shaping this new order.