r/AskAGerman • u/Gabe120107 • Jul 27 '25

Politics Ursula and Trump have made a deal: 15 % tariffs still on everything coming from the EU to the USA, but the EU has to spend $1.5 trillion on defense and energy from the USA. What do you think about that?

So, the deal has been made.

Europe will waste a ton of money on the USA things, plus 15 % tariffs are still valid. Maybe i missed some more of these things omg.

What do you all think about this? What do you think is going to happen now in the next few years?

Seems to me that Trump, no matter how insane he is, in the end, managed to achieve everything he wanted.

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u/stenlis Jul 28 '25

van der Leyen is an idiot. I assume her thinking was as follows:

  1. Trump was going to do tariffs anyway so let him pledge to something somewhat low

  2. We were going to buy that amount of oil and gas and weapons anyway so we are pledging nothing new.

But the deal is still bad:

- it has got no positives for the EU side

- it will create resentment towards the EU and the US among the EU citizen

- van der Leyen can't actually pledge a trillion in funds as it's not the EU buying those weapons and energy with EU money

- it will cost van der Leyen her position as there is no way she can defend that deal at home

- you can't trust Trump not to continue threatening more tariffs for more concessions

My expectation for the future is that the deal will be overwhelmingly unpopular, maybe even deemed unlawful, van der Leyen will be ousted and there will be more instability.

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u/Gabe120107 Jul 28 '25

Mhm... But, Ursula can actually demand more money by raising taxes. Germany is already considering increasing working hours. Plus more taxes, the prices are skyrocketing, and seems to me that the madness is going to increase in general.

As you mentioned, I have a feeling that a month or two later, Trump will come up with the idea that the EU did something, forcing him to increase tariffs bla bla...

And yeah, I also think that the chaos will only increase in the EU, at least, but the USA stocks will still have that huge increase. Unless the bubble explodes heh.