The unthinkable has happened. The US is Europe’s adversary. The stark, profound betrayal contained in the Trump administration’s national security strategy should stop any further denial and dithering in Europe’s capitals. Cultivating “resistance Europe’s current trajectory in European nations” is now Washington’s stated policy.
But contained within this calamity is the gift of clarity. Europe will fight or it will perish. The good news is that Europe holds strong cards.
The US’s bet on AI is now so gigantic that every Maga voter’s pension is bound to the bubble’s precarious survival. AI investment now rivals consumer spending as the primary creator of American economic growth. It accounted for virtually all (92%) GDP growth in the first half of this year. Without it, US GDP grew only 0.1%. Despite Donald Trump’s posturing, he is on shaky economic ground.
Trump’s political coalition is shaky, too. In July and again this month, he has been unable to force Senate Republicans to pass his AI moratorium bill, which would have prevented states from drafting their own AI laws. The Steve Bannon wing of Maga fears that AI will displace workers en masse, and is appalled by what children are exposed to on digital platforms. Maga voters particularly mistrust big tech’s political power. Tech is a dangerous topic for Trump.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has two cards to play that might pop the AI bubble. If she does so, Trump’s presidency will be thrown into crisis.
First, Dutch company ASML commands a global monopoly on the microchip-etching machines that use light to carve patterns on silicon. These machines are essential for Nvidia, the AI microchip giant that is now the world’s most valuable company. ASML is one of Europe’s most valuable companies, and European banks and private equity are also invested in AI. Withholding these silicon-etching machines would be difficult for Europe, and extremely painful for the Dutch economy. But it would be far more painful for Trump.
The US’s feverish investment in AI and the datacentres it relies on will hit a wall if European export controls slow or stop exports to the US – and to Taiwan, where Nvidia produces its most advanced chips. Via this lever, Europe has the means to decide whether and by how much the US economy expands or contracts.
Second, and much easier for Europe, is the enforcement of the EU’s long-neglected data rules against big US tech companies. Confidential corporate documents made public in US litigation show how vulnerable companies such as Google can be to the enforcement of basic data rules. Meanwhile, Meta has been unable to tell a US court what its internal systems do with your data, or who can access it, or for what purpose.
This data free-for-all lets big tech companies train their AI models on masses of everyone’s data, but it is illegal in Europe, where companies are required to carefully control and account for how they use personal data. All Brussels has to do is crack down on Ireland, which for years has been a wild west of lax data enforcement, and the repercussions will be felt far beyond.
If the EU had the gumption to apply this pressure, these US tech companies would have to rebuild their technologies from the ground up to handle data correctly. They would also have to tell investors that their AI tools are barred from accessing Europe’s valuable market until they comply. The AI bubble would be unlikely to survive this double shock.
Maga voters did not vote to lose their liberties and constitutional rights, and an increasingly authoritarian Trump who cannot deliver economic stability because of his closeness to a reviled tech industry is likely to be deeply unpopular in the 2026 midterm elections.
The balance of risk now demands that European leaders cripple Trump. They have learned from a year of abject cowering before Trump that such behaviour only makes it easy for him to push them over. The reasons for caution are disappearing. The extreme reaction of Maga leaders to the relatively minor €120m fine the EC recently imposed on X shows that pulling punches will not placate them. Trump’s “28-point plan” for Ukraine dispelled any illusion that European concessions would secure a return to US military commitment.
With its democracy now explicitly under threat, Europe must join India, Brazil and China in standing up to Trump.
Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is an example of how to do so. He has been dignified and resolute in the face of extraordinary bullying from Trump. In a single month, in September, he proclaimed in an open letter to Trump that his country’s democracy and sovereignty are non-negotiable, countered Trump’s tariffs with its own and passed a new law forcing digital platforms to protect children in Brazil from sexual harassment and other online harms.
Then he rhetorically mugged Trump in a UN general assembly speech just before Trump’s turn to speak. As a result of Lula’s refusal to be cowed, Trump softened his tone immediately. Lower tariffs are now expected after negotiations between the two leaders.
Trump said earlier in December that he thinks Europe’s leaders are weak. He does not believe they will defend Europeans’ liberties and their hard-won democracy against him. So far, the response from European leaders is proving him correct. But what Trump does not yet understand is that von der Leyen holds the US economy and his presidency in her hands. She must have the courage to go entirely beyond any prior norms of her behaviour. In other words, if she grabs Trump where it hurts, Europe will win this fight.
