US President Donald Trump has indicated he is open to connecting tariff negotiations with the presence of US troops in Europe.
According to Trump, it “would make sense to wrap it up in one package”.
He was asked by a journalist in the Oval Office on April 10 if he had any plans to reduce the number of US troops in Europe or in other NATO countries and replied “it depends”.
“We pay for military over in Europe,” the President said. “We don’t get reimbursed by much.”
He said the same was true for South Korea.
“It will be one of the things we discuss that’s unrelated to trade but I think we’ll make it part of it because it makes sense. It would be nice to wrap it all up in one package for each country.”
On April 8, senior US Defence Department officials were said to be considering a proposal to withdraw as many as 10,000 troops from Eastern Europe.
The units in question were part of the 20,000 personnel deployed by the former US president Joe Biden’s administration in 2022 to bolster the defences of countries bordering Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
Critics said such a move by Trump would embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The US President has been vocal in his demands that his European allies shoulder more responsibility for their own defence. That would enable the US to redirect its military resources towards addressing challenges posed by China and other strategic priorities, he has said.
In Europe there have been warnings that an unco-ordinated withdrawal would destabilise NATO’s Eastern defences, according to sources quoted by Bloomberg on April 9.
Trump also said he was heartened to see that the EU did not immediately impose retaliatory tariffs against the US.
He acknowledged that he decided to freeze the higher tariffs recently announced for dozens of countries for 90 days and said he had drafted the order “from the heart,” without consulting lawyers, working instead with his economic advisers.
Brussels announced a response plan on April 9 to counter the 25 per cent US tariffs on steel and aluminium.
The following day, thouugh, it was revealed that the EU plan would also be suspended for 90 days following Trump’s postponement of “reciprocity” duties by the same time period.
