Before Donald Trump became President, he took a shot at Germany by saying that Chancellor Merkel responsible for the refugee crisis due to her open border policies and correctly predicted that the United Kingdom would vote to leave the European Union. After becoming President, in contrary to the expectations, he hasn’t changed his rhetoric at all. In fact, he suggested that the United Kingdom wouldn’t be the last country to leave the European Union and slammed the European Union by calling it a vehicle for Germany. After that, just yesterday, President Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro called the euro an implicit Deutsche Mark and the undervaluation of the euro very beneficial to Germany. He accused Germany as a currency exploiter.

Yesterday, after Peter Navarro’s comments, European Council President Donald Tusk called the Trump administration, an existential threat to the European Union. He called on the member states to take spectacular steps in order to avoid disintegration. He said that he believes that the EU is facing an unprecedented threat, most dangerous since the Treaty of Rome in 1957 which founded the European Economic Community. He said, “For the first times in our history, in an increasingly multipolar external world, so many are becoming openly anti-European, or Euroskeptic at best. Particularly the change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy.”

In an open letter to the EU leaders, Mr. Tusk wrote, “The disintegration of the European Union will not lead to the restoration of some mythical, full sovereignty of its member states, but to their real and factual dependence on the great superpowers: the United States, Russia and China……..Only together can we be fully independent.”         

Well, Mr. Tusk is right in his world view. An integrated Europe has a profound voice and also helps to maintain peace, however, it can’t be denied that the EU and the Euro currency immensely benefits Germany and some other countries, while slowing the recovery in countries like Greece. Unless the EU leaders can truly take up spectacular measures to address these issues, the threats are likely to remain.