It is all too evident that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s policies are neither in the interest of Europe, nor in Germany’s (where she actually comes from). Her policy of cutting all natural gas imports from Russia, of replacing that with more expensive LNG from the U.S. and other Western producers, is raising energy costs for the industry, particularly the energy-intensive ones, which is wiping out the German Mittelstand. Whereas it appears on the surface that her recent deal with Trump is to the advantage of the U.S.A., it is, in fact, the opposite: The American industry depends on machinery imports from Germany to a substantial extent—$34 billion worth. In terms of machine tools, the U.S. has a share of 15% in Germany’s global exports. There is an untapped huge potential in this, which only a broad-scale industrialization of the United States can help to realize. Leaving this potential untapped, among other aspects by the shrinking of Germany’s industrial sector, fits the geo-economic interests of the British Empire and their collaborators in Brussels and in the EU member states.
Industrial representatives of Germany have repeatedly warned against a trade war with the United States, urging von der Leyen to avoid that by making a mutually acceptable deal with the Americans—which she did not make. Even if tariffs on automobiles have been reduced from the threatened 30% to 15%, the lower tariff is to the disadvantage of German and European exporters to the U.S. The threat of 30% has caused a temporary increase of exports to the U.S. out of fear that once such a tariff was introduced, fewer goods could be exported, since U.S. customers would hesitate to import. That has been a pattern in the first quarter of 2025; the second quarter shows a drop in German exports by 4% in April-May, caused by a drop of orders from the U.S. and hesitation by German exporters to sign contracts, whose realization would fall into the high-tariff era, with U.S. customers opting out because of increasing import prices. The von der Leyen-Trump deal still includes 50% tariffs for aluminum and steel exports to the United States.
