President Trump exempted Hungary from sanctions over its continued purchases of Russian oil and gas this week. The same week, Hungary's former deputy intelligence director revealed that Russian and Hungarian political and intelligence services are “working closely together.”
The contradiction is stark: Trump ridicules Europeans for buying Russian energy at the United Nations, then protects the one European Union member state that appears to serve as Moscow’s intelligence conduit on the continent.
The message is clear: European security is not of importance to Trump; his kleptocratic alliance with Orbán and friends is. If the European Union wants to protect its strategic interests, it must abandon the illusion of eventual alignment and embrace a strategy of active economic leverage.
At the tip of the spear is ASML, the Dutch company that holds an absolute monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography machines—the $200-300 million devices that are the sole technology capable of manufacturing semiconductors below 7 nanometers, upon which the American tech industry critically depends. But leveraging this power requires confronting the structural and political choices that brought Europe to this point.
Trump’s sanctions exemption of Hungary caps a humiliating few weeks for Brussels. Belgian intelligence uncovered a Hungarian spy network that was attempting to turn European Union civil servants into assets for Budapest over the last decade.
Meanwhile, major European leaders pulled out of the crucial European Union-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States summit at the last minute to avoid antagonising Trump as he escalated his anti-cartel campaign in Latin America, abandoning Europe's own strategic interests in the region in fear of Trump’s wrath.
The European Union’s response to the second Trump administration has been to appease, buy time, and hope for fate to bless them with a better future. Not equal partners, but a group around Trump’s table hoping his next word will be better than the last.
That strategy of appeasement, delay, and hope has failed spectacularly.
A trade-off that challenges Europe’s rules-based role
In July, President Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced what Trump called "the biggest deal ever made” at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.
European leaders had different words for it. French Prime Minister François Bayrou called it "a dark day" marked by "submission." Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Trump "ate von der Leyen for breakfast."
The numbers explain the assessment. The agreement imposes a 15 per cent tariff on most European Union goods entering the United States while eliminating tariffs on American industrial goods entering Europe—reversing the roughly 1.2 per cent average tariff rate that existed before Trump's second term. Establishing a structural imbalance where Europe pays to access American markets while providing free access in return.
While the United States already now supplies over 55 per cent of EU liquid natural gas imports, the EU committed in the July 2025 trade deal to purchasing $750 billion in American energy and investing $600 billion in America by 2028. While non-binding, it represents a pivot from energy dependence on Russia to the United States.
The joint statement of the trade also included plans to substantially increase EU defence procurement from the United States. Precisely the opposite of strategic autonomy.
The deal also culminated in the European Union’s abandonment of its 75-year commitment to the rules-based trade architecture. As Ignacio García Bercero notes, "The European Union-United States trade deal appears to condone United States protectionism and compromises the European Union’s role as a defender of rules-based trade."
The European Parliament's response captured the mood. Green MEP Anna Cavazzini said the deal "shows Trump and the rest of the world that his blackmail works, further weakening the global rules-based order." European Union Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič defended it by asking, "Tell me, who got a better deal than the European Union?"—inadvertently revealing that Brussels was negotiating not for advantage but merely for survival.
At the forefront of Europe’s priorities in its relationship with the United States are two core objectives: securing long-term defence guarantees and ensuring continued support for Ukraine. Yet despite repeated demonstrations of goodwill and policy alignment, the European Union has failed to obtain any substantive assurances on either front.
Washington steps back, leaving Europe exposed
Trump suspended all military aid to Ukraine in March 2025. Though technically 'lifted' after Saudi cease-fire talks, no new substantive packages have materialised—American support has functionally ended.
In July, Trump announced what appeared to be renewed support: a direct aid package worth approximately $300 million and a NATO scheme potentially worth $10 billion. But the reality was far more limited.
With only a $300 million aid package to show for it, Trump’s support thus far is dwarfed by the $63 billion the Biden administration offered during his term. And the $10 billion 'NATO Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List' mechanism wasn't American aid at all—but Europeans paying to buy weapons from American stockpiles. Europe now shoulders almost the entirety of Ukraine's aid burden while falling short of the €120 billion Ukraine needs through 2026.
Intensifying the situation, the United States has begun to reduce forces from Europe. Many fear this is the beginning of a full withdrawal, reflected in the Project 2025 call for the United States to focus defence on a more regional continental basis and that European allies “should be capable of fielding the great majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent.”
Europe’s appeasement strategy was meant to avoid a trade war, secure America’s security guarantees, and buy time to build strategic autonomy. Instead, Washington has walked away from Ukraine, crushed Europe in the trade war, and executed a strategic reversal that leaves Europe more exposed than ever—long before strategic autonomy is anywhere near achievable.
The European Union now finds itself a paralysed global actor as Trump, Putin, Orbán, and their growing coalition of revisionist allies—Slovakia's Robert Fico and the Czech Republic's Andrej Babiš—work systematically and grow in strength to erode the Union's coherence and strategic position.
Hidden strengths in Europe’s economic position
The noose is tightening. The strategy of waiting out Trump rests on two flawed assumptions: that structural asymmetry in the transatlantic relationship leaves Europe no room to manoeuvre, and that what comes after Trump will resemble the Biden administration’s traditional Atlanticism—an outcome for which there is no clear evidence. The European Union has powerful tools it refuses to use. That must change now.
The EU-U.S. economic relationship is the world's largest bilateral trade and investment partnership, with total two-way trade exceeding €1.6 trillion annually. European companies invest over $100 billion in the United States each year, making Europe the largest foreign investor in the American economy. Brussels has never threatened to weaponise it.
More crucially, the Trump administration has bet big on tech dominance. Leveraging massive semiconductor investments—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's $65 billion Arizona fabs, Samsung's Texas facilities, and Intel's Ohio expansion—the administration has weaponised chip access, demanding equity stakes from foreign manufacturers while imposing aggressive export controls on advanced chips to China. It protected American dominance in artificial intelligence infrastructure, from large language models to cloud computing (Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud) to graphics processing unit production (Nvidia).
This strategy has produced results, as Nvidia last week became the first company to reach $5 trillion in market value late last month, cementing America's rise in artificial intelligence leadership. But it also created a profound vulnerability.
Standing between Trump and technological supremacy is ASML, the irreplaceable gatekeeper for producing the world's most advanced chips. Nvidia's artificial intelligence dominance, America's entire semiconductor strategy, and American tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft depend fundamentally on ASML's machines to produce the cutting-edge processors powering everything from ChatGPT to iPhones.
American technological supremacy—the foundation of Trump's economic protectionism—rests entirely on a Dutch company's continued cooperation with United States export controls and uninterrupted supply to allied chipmakers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Intel, and Samsung.
Brussels has regulatory authority over technology exports under the European Union's dual-use goods framework. While national governments retain licensing authority, the European Commission plays a central role in coordinating implementation, maintaining the EU control list, and proposing updates or new categories of controlled technologies.
A more decisive and robust Europe is needed
To overcome the current unanimity requirement in foreign and security policy—which often stalls action on strategic exports—the EU has three viable paths to act more decisively:
First, enhanced cooperation under Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) allows a minimum of nine member states to pursue deeper integration without requiring full unanimity. This mechanism can be authorised by the Council through Qualified Majority Voting, effectively sidelining veto players like Hungary and creating a “tiered Europe” in areas such as strategic export policy or other domains.
Secondly, the European Union could use political leverage to compel alignment from holdout states, such as by threatening the suspension of Schengen privileges or the withholding of EU funds from governments that obstruct export control decisions tied to common security interests.
Lastly, even in the absence of a formal EU-wide policy shift, a unilateral move by the Netherlands—which holds national authority over licensing for ASML’s advanced semiconductor equipment—could trigger de facto European export control enforcement. If supported rhetorically and diplomatically by a majority of member states, such a move would set a powerful precedent and demonstrate unity, even without unanimity.
If the European Union wants a future where its security is dictated by Brussels rather than Mar-a-Lago, it must leverage ASML and European investment to force Trump's hand.
Using leverage to halt Europe’s slide
The calculation is simple: Trump cannot simultaneously protect Hungary's Russian energy dependence while demanding European subordination on technology, trade, and defence. He cannot exempt Orbán from sanctions while insisting that Europe comply with American export controls that serve the United States' commercial interests. He cannot have both Team Alliance and Team Revisionism.
Brussels should force Trump’s hand. The European Union could announce that ASML export licenses and European technology cooperation will now reflect reciprocal treatment: 15 per cent United States tariffs on European goods mean proportional scrutiny of critical technology exports to American-aligned manufacturers.
Continued American protection of Hungary's Russian energy purchases means re-evaluation of European compliance with American semiconductor export controls. Threats to European strategic autonomy mean consideration of European strategic autonomy in technology policy. Europe has the leverage; it has just refused to use it.
The alternative is to continue on the current trajectory: deeper dependence, weaker security, and steady erosion of European sovereignty as a destructive Visegrád pact wields veto power, Trump squeezes, and Putin wages conventional and hybrid war on the continent.
The triple threat of Trump, Orbán, and Putin is counting on European inaction. Every month of delay validates their assessment that Europe will accept subordination rather than assert itself. Brussels must finally find the courage to use its leverage.
