European plan to appease Trump risks accelerating 'social decay': economists

24 June

U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada on June 16, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

During a Tuesday afternoon, June 24 appearance on MSNBC, Ivo H. Daalder — president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during Barack Obama's presidency — expressed fears that President Donald Trump is alienating the United States' allies at a time when the U.S. needs them the most. Daalder told MSNBC's Chris Jansing, "Allies make you strong…. Donald Trump, for 40 years, has not believed in alliances."

Daalder is not alone in worrying about the United States' longtime alliances, including alliances with fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Although Trump is attending the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, fears that the U.S. has become unreliable are not uncommon in Europe — where governments are increasing their military budget and hoping that doing so will appease Trump.

But according to The Guardian's Damien Gayle, some Europeans fear that increased military spending will mean less money for social spending and scientific research.

"Analyses drafted in anticipation of a NATO Summit beginning on Tuesday warned of the opportunity cost that higher military spending would pose to the continent's climate mitigation and social programs, which are consistently underfunded," Gayle explains in an article published on June 24. "The alliance's leading member, the U.S., and its Dutch secretary general, Mark Rutte, expect members to agree to proposals to dramatically raise defense spending targets from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP. But critics say the focus on military spending, which comes on top of big increases by European countries over the past few years, overlooks the risks to security posed by environmental breakdown and social decay."

One person who is sounding the alarm is Sebastian Mang, senior policy officer at the New Economics Foundation (NEF).

Mang told The Guardian, "Europe's public finance debate has never been about what we can afford, but what governments choose to prioritize. Having already committed to higher defense budgets, plans to raise spending even further expose the double standard applied to investment in climate, housing and care. If extraordinary sums can be mobilized for the military, with far lower economic returns and much lower social benefits, then the refusal to fund a just transition and stronger public services is clearly political, not economic."

Chris Hayes, chief economist at Common Wealth, is speaking out as well.

Hayes, not to be confused with the MSNBC host, told The Guardian, "Demands for further increases to military spending have a stark opportunity cost, prioritizing clean energy would deliver the energy security whose absence was so painfully exposed in 2022."

Read The Guardian's full article at this link.

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