Trump, the Anti-European

On Thursday, March 12, the American president decided to ban access to the United States for one month to those coming from the 26 member states of the Schengen Area under the pretext of impeding the spread of the coronavirus. This is a ridiculous decision.

The coronavirus has allowed Donald Trump to finally achieve his dream of placing Europe under quarantine. By deciding to close the door to the United States on Thursday, March 12, for one month to those coming from the Schengen Area under the pretext of impeding the contamination of his fellow citizens by what he calls a “foreign virus,” the American president has once more betrayed his visceral hostility toward the European Union.

This decision is deplorable in several respects. First, in its current form, taken without the least amount of consultation with the governments of the countries concerned, and put into place in less than 48 hours, it has sown chaos at airports, with airline companies which are already heavily put to the test, consular representatives, world markets, and among hundreds of thousands of travelers.

Secondly, the decision is deplorable with regard to the ban’s scope. Ireland and the United Kingdom, no doubt rewarded for Brexit, are excluded from the ban. But, apart from the fact that Trump owns hotel properties and golf courses in these two countries, this exception does not rest on any scientific claim. If the progression of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom seems to lag a few days behind France, it is on the same trajectory as it was in London—incidentally, where Sophie Trudeau, wife of the Canadian prime minister, contracted it.

Abandonment of Solidarity

In terms of effectiveness, really, the closing of borders is a paltry attempt to impede the spread of a virus. According to the World Health Organization, restricting the movement of goods and people “is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions.” The disdain of the American president for the recommendations of multilateral institutions is not, sadly, a secret to anyone.

Politically, the message that Trump sent is as transparent as his motives are muddled. It is a message of nationalism, of the retreat of the United States behind its borders, and of the rejection of solidarity with a continent that is presumed to be its strongest ally. It is a message straight from the “America First” doctrine, the damages from which have hardly seemed to bother the president for three years.

This message, however, poorly masks another explanation. The search for a foreign scapegoat to distract from domestic problems is a hackneyed scheme taken from the populist register. Trump first accused China of having created the coronavirus, and then underestimated the threat to his own population. Today, careful to obscure his poor management of the epidemic less than nine months from a presidential election that appears much less favorable for him if the economy suffers the full impact of the coronavirus, he has found the ideal culprit: the European Union, which has failed to protect itself from China.

The EU, as a matter of form, has denounced this decision “taken unilaterally and without consultation.” Even though the United States presides over the summit of the Group of Seven major industrial nations, this year it fell upon French President Emmanuel Macron to ask Trump, on Friday, March 13, to convene a special meeting of the G-7. This will take place on Monday, March 16, by videoconference, to try to coordinate the economic response. But let the Europeans have no illusions: it is up to them, and them alone, to come together to confront this terrible crisis.