Juncker’s deal with Trump shows how powerful the EU can be – Britain should take note

In a world where supranational institutions can fend off trouble by doing deals that are mutually advantageous, where does this leave a medium-sized industrialised country with a medium-sized economy that wants to take back control?

There are some meetings you would give almost anything to have been in on – and many of them over the past year have featured Donald Trump. There is the physical opening gambit (those handshakes), the sense of being in attendance at a potentate’s rather disorganised court, and of course, the sheer unpredictability of meetings that – joy, oh joy for reporters – even the most accomplished diplomats cannot always control.

The US president’s latest engagement, while in a lower key way than those with either Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong un, was no exception. On Wednesday he hosted Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, at the White House, and a less propitious pairing can scarcely be imagined.

On the one hand, you had the big, bluff, monoglot tweeter with a taste for seaside resort complexes, tall towers and extravagantly gilded lifts. On the other, you had a multilingual bon viveur, steeped in the diplomatic culture of Brussels, whose wiles and charm propelled him to where he is now. For all Trump’s claim to Scottish and German ancestry, it would be hard to find two more quintessential exemplars of the new continent and the old.

Nor did the circumstances seem favourable. Trump’s dislike of multilateral organisations was graphically illustrated at this year’s G7 summit in Canada, and then at the Nato gathering. The EU crystallises all his problems with multilateralism – and more, because it entails some sharing of national sovereignty. At a meeting with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, the US president is even reported to have recommended that France follow the UK out of the door. Brexit fits right into his worldview.

Less promising still was the reason for Juncker’s trip. It was not to curry favour, still less just to pay respects. It was rather to avert the trade war Trump had declared with his swingeing new tariffs on iron, steel and aluminium. The EU in general, and Germany in particular, feared the likely impact on car exports.

So his mission was urgent, and he was travelling, in many ways, as a supplicant, which is not a good position to be starting from where your opposite number is Donald Trump. There was not even the prospect of a glass of wine to lubricate the proceedings; the US president does not let a drop pass his lips.

And yet – after a mere two hours or so in close conclave, the two emerged into the White House Rose Garden to announce that an accord had been struck. After huffing and puffing about the EU’s iniquity for weeks, Trump talked of “a new phase in the relationship between the United States and the European Union” – two words he pronounced without the hint of a sneer – a phase, he went on – wait for it – “of close friendship, of strong trade relations”.

The nub of the deal appears to be a pledge from the EU to buy more US soya beans and liquefied gas, while the US will refrain from imposing new tariffs on European cars, and – that perennial solution – a working group will be set up to hammer out cuts in tariffs all round. This may do no more than delay the outbreak of a trade war, but it left everyone, including the stock markets, a lot happier, which is not nothing.

And there are conclusions to be drawn from this little episode – about dealing with Trump, but also about the EU itself. Trump first. It cannot be said too often that the US president is a businessman and, in so far as he is a politician, he takes a similar transactional approach. Also, he does not like to waste time with niceties. Juncker arrived on a specific mission with a plan and – courtesy of his position – with a mandate. As he put it: “I had one intention today, to make a deal, and we made a deal.” That is the sort of focus Trump can appreciate. He may not like the European Union as such, but when it gets its act together, well, a deal can be reached.

Second, the EU. There was some disarray after Brussels realised it would not be exempt from Trump’s new tariffs just because it was not China. Very soon, though, a harder-headed realism took hold, with the EU deciding that it could play the game, too. It imposed duties of its own on a selection of totemic US exports, and lodged an appeal against steel tariffs with the WTO – for which there was a hopeful precedent. In 2003, the EU won its appeal to the WTO after then president George W Bush imposed protectionist steel tariffs.

Even now, however, the EU seems to underestimate its international clout. When Trump recently described the EU as a “foe”, that was at least as much of a tribute as an insult. As he subsequently made clear by “foe” what he meant was essentially a “competitor” to the United States. And in the economic sphere that is a fact; nor is it anything to be ashamed of.

Seen from the inside – and also from the island-edge, where the UK currently finds itself – the EU appears to lurch from crisis to crisis. It has been unable to secure its borders; internal freedom of movement has caused tensions; there is hostility in some countries towards its liberal principles; not all members have joined its common currency and there are frictions and imbalances among those who have. What is more, one of its biggest, richest and militarily most powerful members has voted to leave.

The raw figures on its economic strength, however, make it an equal with the United States (if it chooses to be so) and the press of people trying desperately to settle there demonstrates its attractiveness in other ways. The calls from others for the EU to play a greater role internationally – how often do you hear calls for more, rather than less, outside intervention? – are evidence of a rare international trust and regard.

Now it may be that the EU will squander all this; that the differences over values and money and migration will in the end bring its disintegration. For the time being, however, the EU is proving more cohesive than its one departing member, and it has started the process – as yet only started – of dealing on equal terms with Donald Trump’s America First USA.

Now Trump’s word may not always be his bond and this week’s EU-US accord was little more than a holding operation. But it was at least that, and it could presage a low-tariff or no-tariff arrangement that turns out to be more acceptable to Europeans than the prospective, and now stalled, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

I argued that two conclusions could be drawn from Jean-Claude Juncker’s Washington trip: that there are ways of dealing with Donald Trump, and that the EU actually has more clout than it often recognises or chooses to wield. But there is an obvious third conclusion to be drawn, too, which is perhaps best left as a question. In a world where powerful trade blocs can fend off trouble by doing deals that are mutually advantageous, where does this leave a medium-sized industrialised country with a medium-sized economy that wants to take back control? Where?