Is the EU an American Vassal State? The Truth About Europe's U.S. Dependence
Ex-Fin Min from Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, explains the weak link in the Western regime.
My easiest prediction yet has come to fruition: the EU would work to try and sabotage Trump’s foreign policy. As you all know, the EU has tag-teamed with the UK to serve as opposition to new-Washington’s Ukraine war policy. The Euros had two chances in Minsk, Belarus to end the war before the tanks rolled in. They failed. (On purpose. Angela Merkel said, “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. It also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.” She also said that no one believed the deal would bring peace.)
The imperial capitol of the Western regime in Washington DC has faced something of a coup d'état. The transatlantic establishment was not ready for it, despite numerous well-informed, well-known individuals warning them for years.
The European Union and London can talk tough about Ukraine, but they will never put boots on the ground, including “peace keepers” who will then be used, in my best guess, in a false flag attack blamed on Russia to upend peace and pressure Trump to about-face. There is a reason their hands are tied. A lot of it is because of their dependence on the U.S. market to survive.
In 2023, the European Union's exports of manufactured goods were distributed as follows:
United States: Approximately 19.6% of the EU's total goods exports were destined for the U.S.
China: Approximately 10.5%.
Examining U.S. Influence Over Europe
Yanis Varoufakis is one of the most outspoken economists in the West. He is the former Finance Minister of Greece during the PIGS crisis that lasted from 2009 to around 2015. It was Europe’s scariest sovereign debt default risk. Yanis spoke with Las Vegas-based YouTuber Cyrus Janssen on Friday. Here is what he had to say about why Europe will struggle to oppose the U.S.:
“Why is Europe so tied to the so-called security umbrella of the United States? It’s not because we need the American military to defend us from the Russians. Under the Soviet Union, maybe, but let’s not go that far back. But since 1991, Europe does not have any enemy that can actually invade Europe with any level of credibility or military power. Putin has been trying to create this military capability, but you can see that even with a war with Ukraine he is struggling to get a few villages in the muddy plains of Ukraine where thousands of Russians have been sacrificed for a few yard gains every week or so. There is no way even if Putin wanted to invade Poland, or Germany, there is no way he could do it and I think our leaders know that. So what is really behind this monomaniacal commitment to this umbrella: well, if you are a German manufacturer of chemicals or steel or aluminum, your viability depends on the United States because you’re running a large trade surplus with the United States. Essentially, the American trade deficit is like a vacuum cleaner that sucks into the United States your exports. You get paid with IOUs called dollars because the U.S. is a deficit country.
“Any other country with a deficit like that would have gone bankrupt by now, except that the United States has the exorbitant privilege of having the international reserve currency – the dollar. They could maintain, if they wanted, almost in perpetuity, this trade deficit (because of the dollar). But it is that trade deficit that is a German company’s Godsend. It is what keeps him in business.
The U.S. goods deficit with the European Union was a record $235.57 billion in 2024, based on Census data.
The goods gap with Germany broke 2023’s record and hit $84.82 billion in 2024.
This surplus for Europe is what kept them quiet when the U.S. government, probably with Ukrainian contractors, blew up Nord Stream I, the Gazprom/EU-owned natural gas pipeline that delivered realiable, cheap fuel to the European economy. They couldn’t speak about it. Why? Because their corporate sector is dependent on the U.S.
More from Yanis:
“When for instance, Nord Stream I bringing cheap Russian gas into Germany was blown up – and now we know it was the United States and Ukraine that did it – they just blew up your supply of cheap gas and they are selling you at ten times the price Texan liquefied natural gas. You need to pay huge sums of money to build terminals (to receive LNG imports) when you had a pipeline bringing you cheap gas from Putin. So they blew this up and you didn’t say a word, not a peep, whatsoever. Why? Because you rely on the United States and its trade deficit to keep selling stuff. That (surplus) is the reason for the vassalage of Europe on the United States. It is the U.S. trade deficit, which of course Trump wants to eliminate. And so when you are sitting in the board room of a large German corporation and you hear that Trump wants to eliminate the U.S. trade deficit you say, ‘oh, my God; let him fail, please.’
Will Europe Turn to China? Good Luck With That!
There has been some talk that Europe, if it is no longer America’s friend “because of Trump”, would turn to China. (Some of the Holy Hoaxes of the regime when they want the Good Plebs to fall in line: “Nazis”, “Russians”, “Follow the Science”, “Trump’s fault!”)
The Europeans are already losing their industrial capacity to China. It’s only a matter of time before China owns Ferrari.
The big German automotive companies did not want to put tariffs on Chinese EVs. Yanis says this idea came from the star member of the regime’s Holy Trinity: straight from Washington itself. European auto makers did not like this idea.
“Under Biden, a directive came from Washington to Brussels: impose tariffs on EVs from China. It’s not that the tariffs imposed on Chinese EVs were ideal for Europe. Indeed it was Mercedes and Volkswagen that were against the tariffs that Europe imposed on car imports because they are doing a lot of business in China and the last thing they want is for the Chinese to reciprocate. European leaders held their nose and did it anyway and started pressuring their businesses to invest less in China and decouple from China against the interests of Europe just in order to be good boys and girls. Clearly, for Europe, they can rescind all of the tariffs on China and investor restrictions now. That will take a smidgen of courage in Europe to do so but they have shown no indication that they will do that. They could bow their head to Trump and do what he says. And if they do that, the degree of economic stagnation in Europe will be made worse.”
"Protectionism risks triggering a chain reaction: tariffs lead to new tariffs, isolation instead of cooperation. The EU Commission is harming European companies and European interests."
– Ola Källenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group (Reuters, June 21, 2024).
Europe could sell more cars in China as imports, but it is more likely than not that China will prefer to buy foreign cars made there. I would say passenger vehicle imports have been rising steadily but slowly over the last 8 years.
Mercedes Benz, BMW and Lexus were the top three imported cars in 2024 with import demand dropping in favor of local production. Sounds like what the U.S. wants to do. It makes sense. China has around 800 million workers.
"The negative effects of these tariffs outweigh any potential benefits for the European automotive industry. They will weaken the EU’s green transition and increase costs for consumers." – Volkswagen Group spokesperson (Financial Times, June 20, 2024).
Value of China’s Car Imports
2023:
$51.7 billion USD (≈¥369 billion CNY)
Note: Imports declined by ~9% year-on-year due to rising domestic production and foreign brands shifting to local manufacturing.
2018:
$50.6 billion USD (≈¥347 billion CNY)
Context: Imports surged pre-trade war but slowed later due to U.S.-China tariffs as China retaliated against American automakers.
2015:
$46.2 billion USD (≈¥296 billion CNY)
Europe automotive beats U.S. in China: EU automakers, led by the Germans, sold $25.8 billion worth of cars in 2023 vs around $9.5 billion for the U.S. automakers.
Here is the full video. In the end, he speaks about the BRICS+ group and dollar hegemony. He says “Beijing is the dollars best friend”. Yanis warns that if there really is an ugly Cold War with China, they could “push the button” on a new monetary system that sideswipes SWIFT, but he did not say that would mean no dollar.
“If you are a company in Shenzhen selling to California, why would you want to undermine the dollar?” he said. “You live on dollars.”
Trump and his acolytes believe the world is multipolar. The West wanted a unipolar world, bu this is not going to happen. There are two many world powers who are opposed to that, and so making it happen requires lots of money spent manipulating foreign countries, creating unpredictable animosities between nations, often at the expense of peace.
Trump recognizes this multipolarity. It goes against the designs of the grand open society of the West post World War II. In this recognition of multipolarity, we have entered into a post-globalist West, one that will be riddled with strife and new reveals about the previous ways of governing that will have democratic societies from Europe to the U.S. demanding real change. If they don’t get it, the West will be lost, perhaps for generations to come.