For EU, freeing itself from US is no easy task

The first 40 days of the new Donald Trump administration have caused panic across the European Union, leaving EU leaders thinking how to maintain the bloc's relevance and global standing without the support of the United States. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and French President Emmanuel Macron have both asked the US to focus on its trade conflict with China, not the EU. American and European officials, past and present, have admitted such "coordination", or openly allowed Washington to dictate the EU's policy toward China. That, incidentally, was what prompted Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares to tell the Financial Times early this week that the EU should work out its own China policy and not ape the Trump administration's confrontational stance toward China. The EU learned a hard lesson during the first Trump administration, when the US imposed punitive tariffs on the bloc and threatened to punish EU companies conducting business with Iran following the US' withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.But the EU forgot that lesson quickly after the Joe Biden administration warmed up to Brussels in its bid to use and abuse the bloc to further its hostile strategy toward China.