HAARLEM, the Netherlands — These were the people we liberated during World War II, who enlisted in the Cold War, who agreed to welcome our bases, who embraced our movies and television shows, and who supported our fast-food establishments and business enterprises. We took them for granted and sometimes for fools, thinking that our New World riches and power were superior to their Old World ways and traditions, and despite that — despite the way we revered their Vermeers and van Goghs but dismissed their fussy sensibilities — they stayed loyal to us, even as we tried their patience in Vietnam and defied their interests during the 1971 Nixon shock that, without decent notice, rocked their financial markets. Now the Americans, who beat back the Axis powers with their arms and built up Europe’s economies with the Marshall Plan, are brandishing the tariff weapon in an effort to build up ourselves while retreating from the international order we helped create. The Americans who created a world market, and profited hugely from it, now are determined to live within their vast internal market, the world they once bent to their will be damned. That’s why Europe is shaking its head, and its financial fists, in wonder, disbelief and resentment. The counting houses of Amsterdam, London, Paris and Frankfurt no longer include their ties with the United States — financial, diplomatic, military — when counting their blessings. They aren’t counting on U.S. trade that consists of about $5 billion in goods and services daily with the nations of the European Union, which until recently was one of the greatest trade relationships in world history. Having transformed his government into a combative vanguard of disorder and disruption, Donald Trump is extending disorder and disruption into the continent that spawned the Western civilization he believes is central to our own culture. There is a disconnect here that future historians will find exhilarating to examine — but inexplicable. As the United States prepares to mark its semiquincentennial, Americans are embarking on one of their periodic spasms of worship of two of the greatest products of the European Enlightenment: the 1776 Declaration of Independence and the 1787 Constitution. Those two documents are about to be subjects of national veneration, especially with Trump in the White House. The president, no historian, is a devoted enforcer of what we might call a retinoid version of history — one told with an application of anti-blemish wash. A leader who has trumpeted “America First” almost surely will note that America was the first country to embrace freedom as its birthright. But he is far less likely to emphasize the Enlightenment values of free inquiry, independent thinking, equity and — think back to your ninth grade civics unit on the Constitution — the preservation of the rights of the minority through the separation of powers, checks and balances and the Bill of Rights, all now under assault. These concepts are America First in their inclusion in a structure of government, though their roots go back to Europe. Among the creators of that vital Enlightenment period were the College of William and Mary, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Pitt, Georgetown, Bowdoin and three dozen other colleges and universities. Many of them are special targets of the president. (Embattled Harvard came a bit earlier.) Part of Trump’s tariff offensive can be traced to his identity as a businessman and his experience in the combative Manhattan real-estate arena and his other ventures in hospitality and casinos. And while William Dean Howells called Mark Twain “the most de-Southernized Southerner I ever met,” the president is the least de-businessized businessman America ever met. He is a stark contrast to Michael Bloomberg, who was mayor of New York City; Mitt Romney, who was governor of Massachusetts; and Herbert Hoover, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Trump’s businessmen predecessors in the White House. Only a few European leaders have had business backgrounds. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain managed a sisal plantation in the Bahamas. French President Emmanuel Macron was an investment banker who worked at Rothschild and Co. Though both employed crude governmental versions of cost-benefit analysis in their leadership roles, their identity was more political than commercial. While American presidents have often been described as “chief executives,” Trump governs as a CEO — a subtle but significant difference. This corresponds to an ongoing transformation in the character of American government. A 2017 Brookings Institution study found that the number of members of the House of Representatives with business or banking experience more than doubled in the 15 years beginning in 2001. Sitting in America’s C-suite, Trump emphasizes his celebrated art of the deal even as he employs artless negotiating tactics. The opening gambit in his battle with what he characterizes as “totally unacceptable” European trade practices barriers was a set of 50% tariffs now postponed to July 9 pending negotiations. “The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social sentence that likely would not receive honors grades at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater. Trump also has argued that in trade relationships with the United States, the European Union has “treated us very badly over the years.” Let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge that relations between allies are often difficult. Though there’s substantial overlap between the EU and NATO, and despite the fact that the United States and Europe share values, outlook and a common modern history, there always are strains among allies. Some of them are the subject of Tim Bouverie’s new book, “Allies at War.” Next month, for example, marks the 85th anniversary of the British air attack, on Winston Churchill’s order, that sank the French fleet at rest at Mers-el-Kebir near Oran in French Algeria. The death toll: 1,297 French sailors. Three decades later, European waters were roiled by the unilateral cancellation of direct convertibility of the dollar to gold and the then-unprecedented imposition of 25% trade barriers on some European products that Nixon announced. Ralf Dahrendorf, a Common Market external trade and relations commissioner, said the Nixon decisions “respond to American selfinterest without evident regard to the interest of others who are and will continue to be closely allied with the United States.” No European leader feels that way today. (David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)
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