What the U.S. Should Do in Europe in 2021

The Top Five U.S. Priorities for European Policy in 2021, with Daniel Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #6037, January 13, 2021. "2021 will be an inflection point for transatlantic relations. A new U.S. Administration and Congress should focus on reinforcing the transatlantic alliance and working with Europe to address threats from aggressive state actors, while meeting the monumental challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the policy differences between the U.S. and Europe on key issues will not disappear under a Biden presidency, the need to work together remains essential: U.S. security rests first and foremost on the strength of the transatlantic alliance."

Cooperative Pandemic Measures with Europe

The U.S.–European Economic Partnership Recovery Plan, with colleagues at the Heritage Foundation, Heritage Foundation Special Report #230, May 8, 2020. "Europe is being devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, and the economic situation in the United States is not much better. The U.S. and Europe need each other more than ever in order to pull each other out of the post-COVID-19 economic crisis. This Special Report has identified seven areas of potential transatlantic community cooperation between the U.S. and Europe: (1) economic freedom, (2) a U.S.–EU Free Trade Agreement, (3) a U.S.–U.K. Free Trade Agreement, (4) the Three Seas Initiative, (5) the Visa Waiver Program, (6) Europe’s energy security, and (7) Europe’s approach to China 5G technology. Cooperation on these seven areas offers a realistic and meaningful approach for Americans and Europeans to help each other."

Avoiding TTIP Redux

Ten Principles for U.S. Trade Negotiations with the European Union, with Gabriella Beaumont-Smith, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3480, April 8, 2020. "Since the collapse of the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in 2016, trade tensions between the U.S. and the European Union have increased. In July 2018, the U.S. and the EU agreed to negotiate a trade agreement, and in October 2018, the U.S. released its negotiating objectives for trade talks with the EU. These objectives are generic and based on a vision of “balanced” and managed trade that is excessively pessimistic about the value of free trade. Negotiating with the EU will not be easy: The EU’s support for regulatory harmonization and its proclivity for accompanying its free trade agreements with broad political declarations are both unacceptable. The U.S. and the EU should learn the lesson of TTIP, and prefer a narrow, principled agreement that increases market-based competition and which can be negotiated rapidly, to an effort to negotiate a wider agreement that fails and thereby only gives rise to further animosity."

No, It's Not A CFIUS

The Potential Risks of the EU’s Investment Screening for the United States, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #5055, April 6, 2020. "The EU has adopted a framework for screening foreign direct investment. While this framework has regularly been compared to the Committee for Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), the reality is that the EU’s framework bears no similarities to CFIUS in form or likely effectiveness. In fact, the EU’s framework is riddled with weaknesses and perverse incentives. Moreover, because the EU’s framework covers EU programs that have been developed in order to create strategic distance between the EU and the U.S., it is likely that the framework will be used not only against the autocracies at which it is purportedly directed, but also against the United States. The U.S. should focus on improving investment screening at the national level, and vigorously protest any use of the EU’s framework against the U.S."

Priorities for the U.S. in Europe in 2020

Six Key Priorities for U.S. Europe Policy in a Crucial Year, with Daniel Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #5025, January 17, 2020. "The year 2020 will have an outsized policy impact on key issues facing the transatlantic alliance. Key challenges for U.S. policy in Europe in 2020 include the continued threat of Russia to U.S. interests and to American allies, Russia’s continued war in Ukraine, the pernicious effects of Chinese investments, the Trojan horse of Chinese 5G technology putting Western intelligence sharing at risk, and failure to secure the Balkans and allowing local conflicts to metastasize. U.S. policymakers should focus on six key priorities in 2020: (1) a U.S.–U.K. free trade agreement, (2) NATO deterrence capabilities, (3) U.S.–EU trade negotiations, (4) moving Europe toward a robust response to the rising threat from China, (5) supporting the Three Seas Initiative, and (6) continued engagement in European hotspots."

Bad News From the EU on Industrial Policy

An EU Industrial Policy Is Bad News for the U.S., Washington Times, November 11, 2019. "The European Union is afraid. It’s afraid that it’s not the home of the world’s largest and leading companies, and it’s afraid that it’s falling behind China and the United States. In its fear, it’s moving toward a policy of creating European champions that will only poison relations with the United States."

The Transatlantic Community

How and Why American Conservatives Must Fight for the Future of the Transatlantic Community, with James Carafano, Nile Gardiner, and Walter Lohman, Heritage Foundation Special Report #217, November 7, 2019. "The American experiment is rooted in Western religion, culture, and ideas, and over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries was recognized universally as the basis of modern Western civilization and the foundation for good governance and a just society. Like for all civilizations, foundational concepts are constantly under challenge, reinterpretation, and revision. Westerners’ belief in immutable rights, however, is the idea that brought the two sides of the Atlantic together—and gives them common cause in facing the world’s challenges every bit as much as a convergence of material interests. This belief and partnership are worth preserving—and it is why American conservatives have a stake in the future of the transatlantic community."

Look Homeward

Why Europe Should Look Inward, Newsday, August 18, 2019. "U.S. relations with Europe are at a low ebb. While President Donald Trump has contributed to the tensions, many of the same difficulties were visible under President Barack Obama. And these tensions are likely to get worse, not better, in the years to come."

Tariffs Are A Losing Battle

U.S. Fighting An Old Trade Tussle, Newsday, July 14, 2019. "President Donald Trump has threatened to impose more tariffs on European trade with the United States. This is not the first time he has made this threat, and it is not an idle one. It is, however, bad economics and bad policy. Worse, it is a distraction from a better trade agenda and the true trade threats from Europe."

U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Testimony on US-EU Trade

Testimony in hearing on “Transatlantic Policy Impacts of the U.S. – EU Trade Conflict,” hearing in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and the Environment, June 26, 2019.

London (and Paris), Not Brussels

U.S. Should Stop Supporting the EU, Newsday, February 26, 2017. "The Trump administration doesn’t like the European Union. Its critics claim this is a major shift in U.S. policy. They’re right. But on substance, it’s the administration that’s got it right. The upcoming French elections show why."

What the US Should Do in Europe

Recommitting the United States to European Security and Prosperity: Five Steps for the Incoming Administration, with Luke Coffey and Daniel Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4646, January 12, 2017. "Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. policy toward Europe has drifted far from its initial premises; Europe itself has changed beyond recognition. The U.S. needs to recognize this fact. President Trump should direct the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee a comprehensive study of U.S. policy toward Europe, a study based on enduring American interests in Europe, the lessons of the post-1945 era, and on the new features of Europe that have emerged since 1991."

Back to the Future in Europe

America’s Outdated Europe Policy: In 2017, the Next President Must Adapt to New Reality, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4559, May 18, 2016, "Since the end of World War II, U.S. policy toward Europe has drifted, without deliberate thought, far from its initial premises—while Europe itself has changed beyond recognition. It is time that the U.S. recognized this fact. The incoming President should direct the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee a comprehensive study of U.S. policy toward Europe, a study to be based on the enduring American interests in Europe, the lessons of the post-1945 era, and on the new facts of Europe that have emerged since 1989."

Better Out Than In

Why the U.S. Fails to Grasp British Disquiet Over EU, Yorkshire Post, May 16, 2016, "If it made any difference to the debate, President Obama’s recent press conference with the Prime Minister appears to have boosted the Brexit cause. Obama’s intervention is just the latest incident in the history of American failures to realise why Britain is better off out than in."

They're Not Our Friends

The Top Ten U.S. Myths About the European Union, CapX, January 21, 2016. "If the US is to be an effective ally of the democratic nations of Europe, it must see the European Union (EU) as it really is. In the years after the Second World War, the US was right to encourage Western Europe to trade more freely and to cooperate for their own security, both to defend against the Soviet threat and to stabilize the region’s fragile post-war democracies. This policy lost its relevance after the end of the Cold War and the rapid democratization of much of Eastern Europe. At that point, the US had achieved what it wanted to achieve with its support for a united and free Europe."

Advance, Project Fear!

Why Project Fear is David Cameron’s Ultimate Weapon in EU Struggle, Yorkshire Post, January 9, 2016. "DAVID CAMERON launched his renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership with the hope that “we can deliver a more flexible, adaptable and open European Union”. As that optimism has faded, the resort to fear has grown. And so far, the US has lent a willing hand. It’s startling to go back now to Cameron’s Bloomberg speech. It appeared to make the case for fundamental reform of the EU. But from the beginning, there was never any good reason to believe the EU was interested in fundamental reform.

The Myths of U.S. Strategy in Europe

Available in PDF only. U.S. Strategy in Europe: Advice to Policymakers, American Foreign Policy Council Defense Dossier, November 15, 2015."The fundamental problem confronting American strategy in Europe is that the United States has forgotten that it needs to have its own strategy in Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, and with the important exception of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, the U.S. has regarded Europe as an area where power politics no longer operate, and thus as an area that is reliably stable, peaceful, and prosperous. As a result, it has ignored the broader implications of Europe’s worsening security environment, and outsourced the effort to care for the future of the European continent to the European Union. Both of these approaches are wrong."

Contra the EU

Time for the U.S. to Rethink Its Support for the European Union, Daily Signal, October 4, 2015. "It is time for the U.S. to recognize that the policy of supporting the EU is now longer in the interests of the United States, or of Europe itself. The time when that policy was wise has now passed."

Why Brexit Is In America's Interests

Ten Reasons to Rethink U.S. Support for British Membership of the European Union, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4463, September 29, 2015. "The referendum and the terms of Britain’s relations with the EU are ultimately and always matters for the British people to decide. However, in advance of the referendum, the U.S. would be well advised to consider its own interests carefully and not to continue its unthinking support for the EU, which has marked the Obama Administration and too much of U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War."

Against TTIP, Contra Mundum, Part II

TTIP: Small Upside, Big Downside, CapX, May 17, 2015. "One of the best things about the debate between believers in the free market over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the so-called US-EU free trade area, is that it cuts to the heart of a larger question: how do we advance freedom in practice? A lot of opponents of TTIP on the left (and some on the right) reject it either because they hate free trade and the free market, or because they are old-fashioned protectionists. That’s not true of any of the participants in this debate. We’re all free marketeers: we just disagree on how to get there."