On Wednesday, Donald Trump was declared the winner of the US presidential election.

Now, American elections always matter for Europe, but this one especially so, given the stark differences in Harris and Trump's attitudes towards the EU, Ukraine, and NATO.

So in this video, we're gonna take a look at how Trump's policies will affect Europe, how Europe might respond to a second Trump term, and whether this is the beginning of the end for the transatlantic alliance.

Before we start, if you haven't already, please consider subscribing and ringing the bell to stay in the loop and be notified when we release new videos.

Broadly speaking, the two policy areas from a new Trump administration that would most directly affect Europe are Trump's foreign policy and his tariff-centric economic policy.

Let's start with his foreign policy though.

From Europe's perspective, the most important foreign policy issue at stake is obviously Ukraine, and the question of NATO more widely.

So what actually is Trump's Ukraine policy?

Well, it mainly seems to revolve around ending the war as fast as possible.

On multiple occasions, Trump has claimed that he'll negotiate a deal between Russia and Ukraine almost immediately upon taking office, or even before he's actually assumed presidency.

More recently, Trump claimed on the Lex Friedman podcast that he had, quote, a very exacting plan on how to stop Ukraine and Russia, but that he couldn't talk about the plan because if he did, then they wouldn't be a surprise.

This has unsurprisingly provoked some anxiety in Kiev and other European capitals, because Ukraine worries that any deal agreed right now would benefit Russia, or at least fall short of Ukraine's maximalist war aims, which include recapturing all of its pre-2014 territory, although we should say that this currently looks very unlikely to happen anytime soon regardless.

These anxieties were exacerbated by an interview that J.D.

Vance gave to the Sean Ryan Show in September, where he talked about a demilitarized zone along the current front lines, and said that Ukraine would end up as a neutral state rather than joining NATO.

Despite the fact that NATO has already started Ukraine's membership process, and Ukraine has made it clear that it feels that NATO membership is the only effective way of guaranteeing against future Russian aggression.

Nonetheless, even if it's suboptimal from Kiev's perspective, Trump will probably be able to force Ukraine to agree to a deal by threatening to withhold much needed military aid, as he did in his first term.

That is, assuming that the rest of NATO doesn't massively step up to fill the void left by the US, or Ukraine decides to fight on anyway.

Now, we should say that Trump's talk of a deal hasn't gone down well in Russia either, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissing his claims of a quick deal as, quote, within the realm of fantasy.

While Vance's proposed deal is arguably closer to Russia's ideal outcome than Ukraine's, giving that it would mean Ukraine ending up as neutral, it still falls short of Putin's maximalist war aims, which include the total annexation of the four oblasts claimed by Russia in 2022, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia.

Russian forces currently don't control all of Donetsk, Kherson, or Zaporizhia, so a freeze along the current front lines would fall short of Putin's stated aims, especially if there's a sizable buffer zone.

So if Russia does refuse Trump's rapid peace plan, which seems at least possible, it'll be interesting to see how Trump responds.

While many European and Ukrainian leaders worry that he'll just make concessions to Putin, it's worth noting that in a 2023 interview with Fox News, Trump said that he'd actually step up support to Ukraine to force Russia to acquiesce, saying, quote, I'd tell Putin, if you don't make a deal, we're gonna give them a lot, more than they ever got.

When it comes to NATO more generally, though, Trump's policy basically seems to be a more extreme form of the policy he pursued in his first term, getting other NATO member states to pay more into the budget.

Now, while a complete withdrawal from the alliance does seem unlikely, Trump's presence in the White House does arguably undermine Article 5, which guarantees that all NATO members will protect any other member that comes under attack, given that Trump has explicitly said that he won't protect NATO members who don't pay their way.

But it's not all just about foreign policy, because Trump's economic policy will also impact Europe.

Trump has again threatened to impose tariffs on the European Union, like he did in his first term, although it's worth noting that the tariffs he did in fact impose ended up being less dramatic than his 2016 campaign rhetoric suggested.

This time round, Trump has floated imposing a flat tariff on all goods coming into the US, running at either 10 or 20%, and told Bloomberg in an interview a couple of months ago that the EU is like China, presumably a reference to the fact that they both run large trade surpluses with the US.

Research by LSE suggests that these tariffs would hurt the European economy, albeit far less than they'd hurt the Chinese or American economy.

But some countries, especially those that export lots to the US, like Germany, would be hit worse than others.

More worryingly perhaps, in the long term, these tariffs could accelerate Europe's ongoing de-industrialization by encouraging manufacturing companies to move their factories to America so that they can sell products into the American market tariff-free.

All in all, both Trump's economic and foreign policy will probably present serious challenges to Europe.

Whether or not Trump's presidency ends up being good or bad for Europe, however, ultimately depends on how the continent responds to these challenges.

Here, there's an optimistic take, a neutral take, and a pessimistic take available.

The optimistic take, recently outlined in a controversial Politico piece by Mushtaba Rahman, is that a second Trump presidency would actually be good for Europe.

A second Trump presidency could force the EU to cooperate more and take more dramatic action on issues of defense, security, and the economy, perhaps finally ending the continent's precarious reliance on its increasingly unpredictable transatlantic neighbor, something the French have wanted to do since de Gaulle.

The more measured, neutral take is that the EU will respond to a second Trump presidency the way it did to the first one, basically do damage control, try and avoid annoying Trump, and just hope that a more Atlanticist candidate succeeds him next time round, as Biden did in 2020.

In this scenario, the EU doesn't really change.

It sort of stumbles along, as it always does.

But the pessimistic take is that Trump's return divides the EU.

There's a contingent in European politics, think Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders, and Giorgio Maloney, who agree with much of Trump's politics.

While the EU was able to put up a relatively united front during Trump's first term, this will be more difficult this time around, given the growing number of this more pro-Trump contingent.

And this is why Trump's second term could end up further dividing an already divided EU.

In fact, Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister, and the current holder of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, warned about this exact issue ahead of time, saying that depending on the results of the US election, the EU might have to fundamentally change their approach to Russia, with 48 different news outlets reporting on this story alone.

Now, 36% of that reporting came from the left, while 43% came from the right.

And if you compare the headlines, you start to see some interesting framing emerge.

On the left, you have the Kyiv Independent saying that if Trump wins the US presidential election, Europe cannot remain pro-war.

While on the right, you have a Rego simply saying, Viktor Orban, come on, Donald Trump.

These stories are similar.

The framing, well, that's very different.

Now, all of this analysis is possible thanks to our sponsor, Ground News, a website and app developed by a former NASA engineer on a mission to give readers an easy, data-driven, objective way to read the news.

They put in stories from all over the world and organize them by story, with each story coming with a quick visual breakdown of the political bias, factuality, and ownership of the sources reporting, all backed by racings from three independent news monitoring organizations.

One of my favorite features is their blind spot feed, which shows you stories underreported by one side of the political spectrum or the other.

For example, if you lean right, you probably missed this story where Russia denied, quote, baseless claims about their election interference in the US.

Ground News is such an incredibly useful platform that captures information you just can't get anywhere else.

It's especially useful when you're looking at news stories from around the world, as I'm sure our very global audience often does.

If you're not familiar with the media market, it's hard to know who you should trust.

So Ground's guidance can prove invaluable whether you're a European trying to unpack the US election or an American trying to understand the Bulgarian one.

Okay, the latter does sound less likely.

Best of all, Ground are currently offering our viewers a 50% discount on their Vantage plan, which includes unlimited access to their election pages, blind spot feed, and many other features that empower you as a news consumer.

This is their biggest discount yet.

So go to ground.news forward slash TLDR, scan the QR code on screen, or use the link in the video's description to subscribe today.