The new old US President spoke clearly about his view on the EU at his first joint government meeting at the end of February.
Let's be honest, the European Union was formed to mess with the USA, claimed Trump, while promising new tariffs and trade measures.
The irritation concerns not least economy and trade, and EU demands on food and goods.
They don't buy our agricultural products, they hardly buy anything from us, and we buy everything from them, he complained in Florida a few weeks earlier.
"Will to destroy"
His disapproval of the EU seems to be shared by heavy parts of his administration.
Foreign Minister Marco Rubio suddenly had a full schedule when the EU's Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas came to Washington last week. And Vice President JD Vance held a scathing lecture on Europe during his visit to the security conference in Munich at the beginning of February.
Some analysts see a clear American line.
What Vance did in Munich shows a will to destroy the progressive EU to create another, allied with the USA and a Europe of countries with conservative leanings, says Belgian university professor Tanguy Struye de Swielande, expert on EU-US relations, to news site Politico Europe.
Strength gives respect?
Within the EU, there are still strong hopes that the US leadership's skepticism can be turned around again. The gigantic military buildup now announced can serve a dual purpose: both to actually be able to defend Europe without the USA, but also to show that one wants and can.
If Europe can stand up for its most necessary defense needs, it can give self-confidence and also a completely new respect in Washington and other places in the world, says Stephen Wertheim from think tank CEIP in Washington to news agency AFP.
Hoping for a meeting
At the same time, it's not easy for the EU to build a relationship if you don't get to meet your counterpart. Neither Commission President Ursula von der Leyen nor Council President António Costa has yet managed to get a meeting with Trump.
Perhaps the chance is greater if one does as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggested and arranges a meeting where all EU heads of state and government also get to participate.
We are ready. We believe it would be useful, says a high-ranking EU source in Brussels.
Even when Donald Trump was President of the USA for the first time (2017-21), the relationship was frosty.
Trump stated, among other things, that he hoped more countries would do like the UK and vote to leave the EU.
A trade war with tariffs could be avoided only after a direct meeting between Trump and the EU Commission's then-President Jean-Claude Juncker in Washington in July 2018.
Juncker's successor Ursula von der Leyen, who took office in 2019, has not met Trump since the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020.
