Mark Landler

Remember, these are countries that are used to generous social welfare programs, welfare programs that are funded by

by governments that historically did not have to spend as much on defense in the military as the United States did.

So that's on one level.

On the economic level, it is true that these countries, at least in theory, do have some leverage.

On the trade front, for example, the European Union can impose what they call anti-coercion measures against other countries, including the United States.

This is something that's colloquially known as the bazooka.

Well, so a bazooka is basically a series of very draconian

measures that the Europeans can impose on another country that they think has hit them with unfair trade practices.

And of course, that would be very painful for the many American companies and investors that do business in Europe.

So that is a form of leverage.

But there seems to be well short of unanimity within the European Union about using measures like that.

And that goes to what is the perennial problem with Europe, which is achieving enough unity around any of these positions to make them truly effective when you're facing, you know, a major adversary like the United States.

There's a huge risk to it.

At this moment, Trump is saying he's not going to impose the additional new tariffs he had threatened.

But he goes back and forth on tariffs all the time.

So if you were to impose the bazooka on the United States, what's to stop President Trump from imposing 100% tariffs or 150% tariffs, which could have really calamitous consequences for German car makers or

French luxury goods exporters.

And that's a real issue for these European countries because these are politicians dealing with their own domestic pressures and tanking your economy to make a point with the United States is not going to do you any favors at the ballot box.

Yes, again, we don't know how solid this off-ramp is or what it entails as of Wednesday evening.

But yes, it does seem like everybody backed off the edge of this particular cliff.