At the age of eight, when Donald Trump was first elected, Benjamin Haddad, a researcher in international relations, lived in Washington. In 2024, the victory is clearer than expected: “We will work with the American president-elect, whoever he or she may be. We will have to find a way to work on our common interests'”, says the man who is now Minister Delegate for Europe. “But the answer is within us: it is the capacity for Europeans to take charge of their own destiny, their security.“.
According to him, and as he affirmed in a book published in 2019, Donald Trump was never “an accident” of history: “It was the accelerator of deeper trends that we saw in American democracy, in its relationship to the world, to protectionism, to foreign policy“The challenge, faced with this according to the Minister Delegate, is the question of European unity, of not going to Washington in a dispersed order.
“It is not in anyone’s interest to enter into a protectionist spiral”
But does Europe have the means to take charge of its security? “There is no choice: there is a war on our borders, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which has a direct impact on our security: Europeans cannot accept that their security is decides without them, that tomorrow we impose a capitulation on the Ukrainians without them”. Is Trump's victory synonymous with Putin's victory in Ukraine? “It would be a historic mistake for both Europeans and Americans to abandon the Ukrainians. It is our responsibility to continue supporting Ukraine“.
“The division of Europeans would harm us all“, he recalls, emphasizing that for example Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recalled that whatever the result of the American elections, it is up to Europe to ensure its security. But among other issues, he There is also the question of protectionism, with Trump considering increasing customs duties by 10%: “Just a few days ago we imposed customs duties on Chinese electric vehicles (…) We knew how to do what Biden's America did“says Benjamin Haddad, who calls for developing these tools”to defend ourselves collectively“, even if “it is in no one's interest to enter into a protectionist spiral“.
Faced with Elon Musk, boss of “We have a model that we have been pushing for years, which is a model of regulation, of accountability for online hatred, for disinformation (…). We can do that because we have a market, which makes it necessary for American investors who come to Europe“.
