“It’s not good for Europe to be the permanent security vassal of the United States.” So says JD Vance during a phone conversation with UnHerd on Monday, his first major interview with a European outlet since taking office as Vice President. The backdrop is a week of turmoil on financial markets triggered by President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
The decision to apply (and then partially rescind) hefty tariffs on European allies — combined with a barrage of harsh statements about Europe from Vance, both public ones and leaked private messages — has left many on the Continent wondering whether America can still be thought of as a friend.
Vance’s answer: yes, provided European leaders are prepared to assume a more independent role on the international stage, and to be more responsive to their own voters, especially when it comes to the question of immigration.
“I love Europe,” Vance tells me in a wide-ranging interview from his office in the West Wing, showcasing a diplomatic side that has not always been front and centre. “I love European people. I’ve said repeatedly that I think that you can’t separate American culture from European culture. We’re very much a product of philosophies, theologies, and of course the migration patterns that came out of Europe that launched the United States of America.”
Europe’s leaders are a different matter. Take Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who, in a recent interview with the American TV programme 60 Minutes, charged Vance with “somehow justifying” Russia’s invasion of his country.
Vance counters this by referring to his condemnations of Moscow’s actions since 2022. But he adds: “I’ve also tried to apply strategic recognition that if you want to end the conflict, you have to try to understand where both the Russians and the Ukrainians see their strategic objectives. That doesn’t mean you morally support the Russian cause, or that you support the full-scale invasion, but you do have to try to understand what are their strategic red lines, in the same way that you have to try to understand what the Ukrainians are trying to get out of the conflict.”
“I think it’s sort of absurd for Zelensky to tell the [American] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians.” That kind of rhetoric, Vance says, “is certainly not productive”.
Beyond Ukraine, the American Vice President worries that European leaders are still failing to reckon with 21st-century realities on immigration, integration, and security.
Vance says: “We’re very frustrated — ‘we’ meaning me, the President, certainly the entire Trump administration — that European populations keep on crying out for more sensible economic and migration policies, and the leaders of Europe keep on going through these elections, and keep on offering the European peoples the opposite of what they seem to have voted for.”
Immigration is at the heart of Vance’s palpable frustration with European leaders. He argues that, as in the United States, open-borders policies handed down from on high are poisonous to democratic trust. As Vance notes, “the entire democratic project of the West falls apart when the people keep on asking for less migration, and they keep on being rewarded by their leaders with more migration.”
Europe’s other blind spot, Vance says, is security. “The reality is — it’s blunt to say it, but it’s also true — that Europe’s entire security infrastructure, for my entire life, has been subsidised by the United States of America.” As recently as a quarter-century ago, “you could say that Europe had many vibrant militaries, at least militaries that could defend their own homelands”.
Fast-forward to today, Vance says, and “most European nations don’t have militaries that can provide for their reasonable defence”. True, “the British are an obvious exception, the French are an obvious exception, the Poles are an obvious exception. But in some ways, they’re the exceptions that prove the rule, that European leaders have radically underinvested in security, and that has to change.”
Vance’s message to the Continent, he says, is the same one delivered by Charles de Gaulle at the height of the Cold War, when the French president insisted on a healthy dose of independence from Washington. De Gaulle “loved the United States of America, but [he] recognised what I certainly recognise, that it’s not in Europe’s interest, and it’s not in America’s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States”.
What the Vice President had not made clear before this interview is that he would prefer to see a strong and independent Europe precisely because it could then act as a better check against the foreign-policy missteps of the Americans.
He says: “I don’t think that Europe being more independent is bad for the United States — it’s good for the United States. Just going back through history, I think — frankly — the British and the French were certainly right in their disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal.”
Vance also alludes to his own experience as a combat veteran of the Iraq War. “Something I know a little bit more personally: I think a lot of European nations were right about our invasion of Iraq. And frankly, if the Europeans had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up, then maybe we could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.”
Bottom line: “I don’t want the Europeans to just do whatever the Americans tell them to do. I don’t think it’s in their interest, and I don’t think it’s in our interests, either.”
Talking about the UK specifically, Vance puts great emphasis on the place it occupies in the affections of President Trump — with a trade deal highly likely as a result.
“We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government” on a trade deal, Vance says. “The President really loves the United Kingdom. He loved the Queen. He admires and loves the King. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [Britain]. But I think it’s much deeper than that. There’s a real cultural affinity. And of course, fundamentally America is an Anglo country.” Thus, “I think there’s a good chance that, yes, we’ll come to a great agreement that’s in the best interest of both countries”.
Other European states are likely to reach new trade arrangements too, though the climb might be steeper. Already, “with the United Kingdom, we have a much more reciprocal relationship than we have with, say, Germany… While we love the Germans, they are heavily dependent on exporting to the United States but are pretty tough on a lot of American businesses that would like to export into Germany.”
The administration’s lodestar will be “fairness”, Vance says. “I think it will lead to a lot of positive trade relationships with Europe. And again, we very much see Europe as our ally. We just want it to be an alliance where Europeans are a little more independent, and our security and trade relationships are gonna reflect that.”
As financial markets have whipsawed in recent weeks, it has not been clear what success looks like from the administration’s point of view. I ask Vance how he will judge the tariff policy in the long term. “What we want to see is lower trade deficits, really across the board,” says Vance. “Sometimes, a trade deficit makes sense. Like, America doesn’t produce bananas. So obviously, we’re gonna be importing bananas, not exporting bananas. So with certain product categories and maybe even with some countries, a small trading deficit can be justified.”
The status-quo system as a whole, however, is intolerable from the White House’s point of view. “What the global trading system has led to,” complains Vance, “is large and persistent trade deficits across product categories, with the gross majority of countries really using the United States [home market] to absorb their surplus exports. That’s been bad for us. It’s been bad for American manufacturers. It’s been bad for workers. And God forbid, if America ever fought a future war, it would be bad for America’s troops.”
But before he became a politician, Vance was a venture capitalist. Has he had heart-sinking moments watching his own portfolio sink into the red in recent weeks? He sounds unfazed.
“Any implementation of a new system is fundamentally going to make financial markets jittery,” says Vance. “The President has been very consistent that this is a long-term play… Now, of course, you have to be responsive to what the business community is telling you, what workers are telling you, what bond markets are telling you. These are all variables that we have to be responsive to” in order to “make the policy successful”.
But Vance says the administration can’t govern for the stock market alone. “No plan is, you know, going to be implemented perfectly… We’re very cognisant of the fact that we live in a complicated world where nobody else’s decisions are static. But the fundamental policy is to rebalance global trade, and I think the President has been very clear and persistent on that.”
Even as adjustments and delays to tariffs seem to have soothed markets and allies, for now, the Trump administration is bent on applying its brand of shock therapy 2.0 to the international system. The goal, of course, is nearly the diametrical opposite of the original therapy: while shock therapy 1.0 goaded the world to follow America into adopting neoliberal globalisation and to follow Washington on its military adventures, this one is aimed at reversing both outcomes.
Yet it can be no less discomfiting to live through the change — not just in the policy orientation, but how it’s communicated: not least by a very-online Millennial Vice President who revels in online debate. Does he think he tweets too much? Eyebrows were certainly raised in Europe when he took the time to get into a Twitter dispute with podcaster Rory Stewart.
Vance laughs. “There are many blessings to this job. One unquestioned downside is that I very much live in a bubble. I’m surrounded by Secret Service agents. It’s very hard for a random person to walk up to me — in fact, it’s damned-near impossible. I see social media as a useful, albeit imperfect, way to stay in touch with what’s going on in the country at large… I probably spend way less time on Twitter than I did six months ago, and that’s probably good for me.”
All told, the Trump-Vance administration’s commitment to turning the page on globalisation as we knew it runs deeper than allies and adversaries alike might imagine. As Vance says: “We’re not on anybody’s side, we’re on America’s side.”
Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It
SohrabAhmari 
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SubscribeI find myself often thinking wistfully of Margaret when seeing how the present ministers are dealing with the country. At least she believed in Britain and its future more than her personal ambitions or ‘optics’.
A good writer, great imagery, fun characters, witty, satirical, irony and lurid analogy… it had it all for British Political opinion/journalism writing, but maybe too much of it, and I ended up wishing for more kind of – just telling the story story, the ‘Who, What, When, Where & Why’ and a bunch of well chosen quotes to cover the landscape of the thing and attendees.
But good essay writing of the classic British kind.
Agreed. I too was struck by the vivid prose and general quality of the writing. The author does touch on an important point, though. The progressives hold most of the institutional power in the UK (and US). Will Boris use his strong hold on political power to counter them or will he just throw bread and wine to the masses for the next several years?
Boris is on a short leash held by the very progressive Princess N N. The way all these Politicos today are seemingly are caught up in some 50’s British Sex Farce, very much being lead around by their parts rather than their desire for good governance, makes me wonder if they have not all been captured by the Post-Modernist Progressives – the same, but reversed genders, as how the Australian one has been.
It is like a very dark Benny Hill episode.
Continuing Galeti’s comedy analogy – the caricatures displayed here are straight from an 80’s Harry Enfield sketch, with a special guest appearance from Rik Mayall playing journalist Will Lloyd who has his nose press up against the window and is screaming “Fatcha! Burn the witch!”
I genuinely don’t know if Will’s piece is a parody or not. The only bit I related to as on point was the excellent Rory Stewart quote. Let me assume he’s serious. Across Europe, we see Political hearts and minds being won on the centre-right and the Green/far left. Boris is shameless in that we will nick ideas from both, whilst dropping same people/initiatives like a hot brick once either becomes unpopular.
Remember, whilst Boris has been running this non-event of a conference, the more extreme elements of the Green manifesto are crashing all over the world. Biggest growth in employment opportunities since the days of “Fatcha!” and the Labour movement can find little to talk about other than who may or may not have a cervix, whilst Blairites chunter on about a democratic vote that happened 5 years ago and whether Boris deserves to have a holiday or not.
Boris doesn’t have to respond or do much at all really – which of course is his most happy of happy spaces. He’s even nicking Trump’s tactics. Knowing the press openly dislike him, he can toss them a different ball twice a day and watch them wear themselves out furiously chasing them round and round.
He stands for everything and nothing; yes, he is the ultimate chancer and chameleon. But frankly, so is Starmer. He doesn’t even control his Deputy Leader, let alone the wider party. The only way he can get elected is by getting into bed with Nationalists, who despise the rest of the UK. By that time he’ll be riding so many horses in different directions that his legs will resemble a Tex Avery cartoon.
It’s no good wishing for a reunion of the guys in that first Blair band either. Those that remain need to get themselves some flash Green gear, get the old Momentum badges out and make their way back to the centre ground that way. Compared to that lot Boris is looking like David Bowie to the voters. Anyway, Steve Bray is awaiting instructions from Millbank’s Burnley headquarters, so good luck and all that.
He may be a fool but he’s their fool Will, and there’s a lot of them who are inclined to vote. Give them a reason to vote for something better, rather than just a reason to hate him personally, and we’ll all start to get to a better place.
You are absolutely correct. The Tory Party is strong as long as it promotes woke ideas. So, as I have said many times, the Labour Party is actually stronger in opposition than it would be in power.
In Oppositionland there is no Covid, no shortage of truck drivers and the everything looks rosy. Even the woke ideas are taught in schools so that the next generation will be brainwashed. The embarrassing Marxist extremists have no power in Oppositionland so they can be safely ignored as well.
I simply don’t understand this. The Tories are strong as long as they promote woke ideas?! Come again?! They are strong, insofar as they are, because they oppose (though often ineffectually), woke ideas, which the more ordinary people hear about, the less they like: ‘white privilege’, putting ‘trans rights above biology etc. The Tories can be pretty useless as long as much of the population realises that its opinions and culture are actively disdained by the Left. The Labour Party has been particularly good at this from Gordon Brown and Emily Thornbury onwards.
I used to detest Thatcher when I was 18. Now I see that she would be a godsend to the country given the state of the Con Party and the Labour supposed opposition. The country is properly f*****
Thatcher was an opportunist and economic illiterate who did one thing right, and several things wrong, including encouraging that crook Rupert Murdoch to buy the Times, (because he supported her), laying waste to Britain north of Luton by way of a grossly overvalued sterling exchange rate in the early 1980’s, and throwing away all the revenue from the North Sea which should have been placed into a sovereign wealth fund and saved for future generations. We don’t want her back in power, thank you.
“(Conservatism gave him an identity. A way of defining himself contrarily.) He said he’d hated school. Hated his Left-wing teachers.”
If I’ve read something like this once, I’ve read it a thousand times in the last 40 years.
Why is this still the case?
Have Tory education ministers all been asleep at the wheel?
They haven’t got ten years.
And people from Teesside don’t have Geordie accents.
Other than that a lovely, well written piece with some good forward pointers.
He has flair as a writer but his pieces are too often rather incoherent.
Pedantic point: in his municipal days, Joe Chamberlain was actually a Liberal. He became a Liberal Unionist over Home Rule and later aligned himself with the Conservatives in the “Unionist” governments of the 1890s and 1900s, serving as a minister.
Houchen isn’t a Geordie either.
This article lost me and dribbled away into a mist when I reached the bit about Ben Houchen having a Geordie voice.
Back in the mists of time when Dominic Cummings was young and working on the No side of the North East Parliament Assembly idea promoted by John Prescott and supported by every council , major political party , quango and what have you,and their spads, tame journalists and the rest the No side had Cummings, John Elliott a full on successful businessman and Somewhere person, and an big inflatable white elephant that sat in the background on every TV interview he gave (after he had helped inflate it himself).
It was a uphill battle for an idea whose time seemed to have come following the recent Scottish and Welsh devolved administrations and it was a bit of a shock when the establishment side lost virtually by 80% to 20% in the vote.
It prefigured the same shock albeit with a narrower margin that happened in 2016 and is still playing out now.
I can’t say I expected the result, either of them, but I did feel that constant references to the Geordie Parliament back then would be counter productive in a region where around 400,000 Geordies are commonly taken as populating a region with around 2.1 million people who aren’t Geordies and many of whom actively resent Newcastle upon Tyne’s pre-eminence, especially those on the Wear and the Tees.
I was surprised that Tony Blair one of the 4 party Leaders keen on it back then kept banging on about this Geordie Parliament, as the MP for a Durham constituency near enough to Teesside to be a rural commuter land he should have known better.
Houchen was born and raised on Teesside and his accent is a Tees one he’s a Smoggie not a Geordie.
One thing is certain:
“Green” jobs will never match the number of jobs that green policies destroy.
‘…is corrupting..”? “… has corrupted…” surely!
A wobbly, unclear, drifting article, but one which attempts to discuss a truth – the Tories, as in the early 1990’s under Major, have become corrupted by power. The failed attempt to reinstate the corrupt ex-MP Owen Paterson, by using the pages of the Daily Telegraph and strong-arming Tory MP’s, was a turning-point. Many Brits won’t vote for Boris again. They are having a good look at Starmer, and like a lot of what they see: honest, intelligent, well-meaning. He needs to sharpen his ideas and focus on some key themes. Tory corruption and dishonesty should be one of them.