When Donald J. Trump took the oath of office in Washington on Monday, the crowd at a packed party hosted by Ukrainian business groups in Davos, Switzerland, watched the ceremony intently on giant screens.
The event, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual conference, appeared to be a show of enthusiasm for the returned American president. Speakers praised Trump and predicted he would be a valuable partner to Ukraine in its war against Russia, despite his criticism of American spending on the military effort. Waiters served mini cheeseburgers on red and blue buns (“American food,” attendees whispered). At the end some applauded.
However, the apparent optimism was a thin layer on top of deep uncertainty.
“We hope that President Trump will surprise us, but we don’t know what the surprise will be,” Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, said at the party.
Trump’s return to the White House has plunged Europe’s business leaders and policymakers into a precarious era, and officials have been preparing for it behind the scenes. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, formed a group that was never officially announced, sometimes referred to colloquially as the “Trump task force,” which spent much of 2024 working on possible responses to the changes in US trade and foreign policy.
However, it is difficult for companies and government officials to know what is hype or bargaining chips and what is reality. And they have learned from the first Trump administration that criticizing the American president too openly could achieve little and could attract attention and even retaliation.
So companies and governments alike are acting cautiously to curry favor with, or at least avoid angering, the mercurial president of the world’s most powerful nation.
The European Commission is an example of this. Task force staff members spent 2024 researching possible detailed responses to the new American presidency. But publicly, top officials have expressed only a willingness to negotiate in response to possible tariffs and other threats, while vaguely warning that they would retaliate to protect the bloc’s own interests if necessary.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the commission, suggested in the days After Trump’s election, Europe could buy more American liquefied natural gas. That’s something Trump has said Europe must do to avoid tariffs.
“The only thing they can do quickly is buy our oil and gas,” Trump said. reiterated to journalists at the White House after his inauguration on Monday. “We’ll fix it with tariffs, or they’ll have to buy our oil and gas.”
But von der Leyen has often spoken only in generalities about how Europe might respond to trade restrictions.
“There is a lot at stake for both sides,” he said during a speech in Davos on Tuesday, adding that “our first priority” would be to negotiate.
“We will be pragmatic, but we will always defend our principles,” he said. “We will protect our interests and defend our values.”
The working group had a broad mandate but was heavily focused on tariffs, several people familiar with the group’s work said. They requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Olof Gill, a spokesman for the European Commission, confirmed the existence of the group, but noted that it was operational throughout 2024 (well before the actual election) and was not officially called the “Trump task force.”
The group was headed by Alejandro Caínzos, a experienced staff member with experience in international relations. He declined to comment for this article.
One strategic reason for keeping work relatively quiet is that Europe appears to be trying to keep its options open.
Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, said the bloc was being more disciplined than in the first Trump administration and “not getting swept up in cycles of political reaction.”
“That’s a major learning curve that the EU went through,” he said.
Europe’s planning for potential trade disruptions also contrasts with its behavior in the first Trump administration, Fleck said. At the time, tariffs on steel and aluminum It surprised America’s allies across the Atlantic Ocean.
Still, any preparation can have limits.
The situation in 2017 was “a much more limited threat,” said Ignacio García Bercero, a former official at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade who now works at the Bruegel research group. This time, Trump has threatened to impose blanket tariffs if he sees fit, rather than one-off levies on particular industries.
And Trump’s actions in his second term could encompass multiple policy areas, uniting energy, trade and defense objectives.
In response, European countries “need to be much more creative,” Fleck said.
In some ways, Trump’s arrival is accelerating changes that were already coming. Ian Lesser, who heads the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund, noted that while Trump’s rhetoric could accelerate greater European military spending, that change was widely seen as necessary.
“The big questions it raises only reinforce existing concerns,” Lesser said.
Still, Trump could force European politics to evolve more quickly.
On February 3, the European Council, made up of the leaders of the 27 EU countries, will meet in a castle on the outskirts of Brussels to discuss the way forward on security, including issues such as funding and common procurement. Notably, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Great Britain will attend that event, the first time that a British prime minister has met with the entire group since the country voted to leave the European Union in 2016.
That highlights a possibility that arises from all the uncertainty ahead.
While many in Europe are concerned that Trump will strike deals one by one with Europe’s countries (splitting the union), it is also plausible that pressure could bring Europe and its partners closer together.
“I think the public will see that there is strength in the negotiation as a bloc,” Beata Javorcik, chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said during an interview at a Davos cafe.
Before Monday’s inauguration in Washington, François Bayrou, the French prime minister, criticized the United States for its “dominant policy” stances. But given that, he said, European nations should work together.
“It is a decision that depends on us, the French and the Europeans,” Bayrou told reporters in Pau, a city in southwestern France where he is still mayor. “Because obviously, without Europe, it is impossible to do it.”
Aurelien Breeden, Jenny Gross and Catalina Porter contributed reports.
