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Your guide to what the 2024 American elections mean for Washington and the world
Maybe there is a simple reason why Donald Trump’s agenda is so hostile to Europe. Trump responds to flattery. Europe offers him almost none.
Even while European leaders sometimes try to massage the weakest man in the world, their public makes no secret for their contempt. Among the voters in France, Germany and Spain, two -thirds say Trump’s elections have made the world less secure. Europe is very bold for the eyebrow.
Trump probably noticed this, just as he probably noticed a balloon of a giant orange baby flown on his state visit to London in 2019. His policies – imposing tariffs, threatening Greenland, shredding climate actions, betraying Gaza and Ukraine – could hardly be governed.
The temptation for the Europeans is to go further: to light not only to him, but to America himself. A short jump from the deciphering of the US president as a dictatorial moron to decree the public who chose it. In February, Canadian ice hockey fans led the US national anthem; “Make America leave” has made a great baseball cap. But otherwise, anti-Americanism has been visible from its absence.
Compare this with the years of George W Bush, the president who claimed to be bad for which he had been misguided before drowning in a harness, when Americans were routinely mocked as fat, ignorant and arrogant. New Yorkers on vacation became personally responsible for war crimes. On the eve of the Iraq war, Europeans jokes about the difference between yogurt and Americans. Punchline: After a while, the yogurt develops a culture.
The then French president, Jacques Chirac, liked to say that he had a simple principle on the outside: “I see what Americans are doing and do the opposite. That way, I am sure I will be right.” How they were crying. This was the zenith not only of the anti-American Islamic terrorism, but of Latin American anti-imperialist populists like Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales.
But anti-Americanism has changed in 2025. Jokes about nationality do not land so well now. It is rightly not fashionable to blame citizens for their governments, especially if the Americans we are likely to encounter are desperate democrats.
However, Netflix and social media have all tied us together. You really can’t reject American culture when you decide to consume it every day. Go to Paris today and see how people easily speak English. Go to London and Enigma in the number of NFL fans. Judging from the messages of JD Vance and Pete Hegseth signal, the Trump team is more anti-European than Europeans are anti-American.
Those replaced by Elon Musk’s X’s are moved to another West Coast, Bluesky-based network. European car buyers boycott Tesla but would buy a good American alternative. Like Bush’s most effective meetings came from an American director, Michael Moore, Trump’s best criticism and Musk will surely come from the US itself. America is also thesis and antithesis.
Even diplomatic, anti-Americanism does not fit the moment. Trump has agreed with a regime that was fanatically anti-American under the bush-meaning Putin Russia-and even making sporadic gestures to Shavista Venezuela. Europeans are hardly in humor anti-Empire: they want American protection, not withdrawal.
The teaching of Bush’s years is that the presidential idiocy is temporary. Five and a half years after invading Iraq, America elected Barack Obama as president. Anti-Americanism is similar to the amputation of your broken leg, rather than waiting for it to heal.
But if it is wrong to clash Americans and their president, it is wrong to share them completely. Trump reflects half of America. It reflects a society where a democratic majority is ready to tolerate mass shootings and a fighting political system. America provides so much from the cultural background of the world that we sometimes make it wrong for our country. It is not, even when a Democrat is president.
Just last spring, during Joe Biden’s presidency, the US was unfavorable by at least half of the public in Greece, Singapore and Australia, with more than 40 percent in Britain and Canada. The next time the surveys ask the question, they will no doubt find a record Western disappointment.
Europeans – and Canadians and others – are realizing that we have our values and not too long to stand for them. Boycot Philadelphia Cream Cheese if it makes you feel better. But most Europeans see that times are now very serious for anti-American knee.
Henry Mance is the FT FT Main writer
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