Paola Tamma

But obviously, if there are very strong voices against it, like, say, France or Germany or Italy, then it's unlikely that this would happen.

I think that there's a real shift.

If you see polls, for instance, a recent one late last week, over half of Europeans perceive Trump, President Donald Trump, as the enemy of Europe.

And almost three quarters of Europeans think that Europe can only count on itself in terms of defense.

So they do not think the U.S.

would come to its rescue.

And that's a real shift in public opinion.

And I think, interestingly, also parties and leaders in Europe, which would be aligned naturally with Trump and even the MAGA movement, they have had to kind of realize that Trump doesn't have Europe's best interest at heart.

And so you would have seen statements from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who, even though she is seen as one of the most Trump-aligned parties,

European leaders and one that seeks to be a bridge builder, she had to respond to public opinion in Italy to some of the statements that Trump made about allies not coming to the US rescue or staying out of the fights, for instance, in Afghanistan.

And she had to call him out on that.

And she had to say, we do not accept this.

Absolutely.

And it's something that, you know, even leaders who would be otherwise rather mild in their response could just not ignore because public opinion has reacted to this and has shifted quite significantly vis-a-vis the United States.

There's a variety of tools, right?

And even the so-called trade bazooka, anti-coercion instrument is one of them.

Nobody has said it's off the table, we cannot use it.

And that was the precise use case for it, if we want, because it was coercion by economic threats to get a certain outcome from the US.

But the issue is,

Whether or not the EU decides to use it depends on what is the opportunity cost of doing so.