President Trump has declared that the European Union, Nato and the World Trade Organisation are bad for America, according to senior diplomatic sources.
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, told EU leaders that Mr Trump posed a serious threat to western unity and it would be a mistake to dismiss the US president as stupid.
“He has a method and is serious in his mission against an international rules-based order,” Mr Tusk told the leaders, according to a senior diplomatic source. “He is on a mission against what we stand for.”
Over recent days European leaders have exchanged accounts of often bizarre encounters with Mr Trump. One diplomatic aide said that the president had told the prime minister of a European country that he “can’t stand” Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, “because that woman embodies everything that I hate”.
According to another account, when President Macron of France visited the White House in April Mr Trump urged him to withdraw from the EU and instead secure a more favourable bilateral trade agreement with Washington.
On Thursday night during a Brussels summit dinner, EU leaders briefly discussed fears that Mr Trump’s policies could lead to the “worst-case scenario” of Nato breaking up.
Mr Tusk and Mr Trump met at the G7 summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, at the beginning of June. The summit ended in disarray after Mr Trump refused to sign a previously agreed G7 communiqué declaring support for “free, fair, and mutually beneficial trade”. A diplomatic source said: “During a meeting at the G7 summit, Trump told Tusk that the WTO, Nato and EU are the worst of deals and bad for America.”
According to aides, Mr Tusk, 61, used private meetings in the run-up to this week’s EU summit to warn of the threat that Mr Trump posed to the West’s multilateral organisations.
European leaders were told that Mr Trump, 72, had an “obsession” with German car imports into America and “consistent and structured resentment against the EU”. Mr Trump “seems fascinated with authoritarian leaders” such as Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, and President Putin of Russia, Mr Tusk told EU leaders. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, joked this week that the only politicians in Europe that Mr Trump would regard as “real men” were Viktor Orban, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, and Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s anti-immigrant League party.
During Mr Macron’s state visit to Washington, Mr Trump claimed that France could expect a better trade deal with the US outside the EU. “Why don’t you leave the EU?” he asked Mr Macron. It was not clear whether the suggestion, made during a private discussion, was a joke or an attempt to sow division within Europe. Mr Macron, 40, was elected last year after promising voters that he would consolidate France’s place within the EU and promote European integration.
According to The Washington Post, Mr Trump suggested to the Swedish prime minister in March that America should leave Nato, in comments his aides later said were a joke. The paper has also reported that Pentagon officials have been ordered to calculate the costs of a large-scale withdrawal of US troops from Germany.
European members of Nato are trying to determine whether Mr Trump intends to pull out the forces, or whether the suggestion is a negotiating tactic before a Nato summit on July 11 in Brussels at which he is expected to question the future of the alliance by linking his anger at European trade surpluses to concerns about defence spending. The EU is also facing a trade war caused by American tariffs on steel and aluminium.
Last night, Mr Trump reiterated his belief that Nato members should spend more on defence. Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One as he flew to his New Jersey golf resort, the president said: “Germany has to spend more money. Spain, France, it’s unfair what they’ve done to the United States.”
