UNDERSTANDING TRUMP’S FRUSTRATION WITH EUROPE
—“So the EU is undermining the petro dollar/sanctions by wanting to purchase Iranian oil with the Euro? Meanwhile the US uses the petro$ to finance the world policing. That sums up the problem with the irreciprocal relationship between the US and the EU or is there more to it?”— A Friend
Mostly, but in addition, the EU then counter-signals and virtue-signals its ability to afford social programs that they could not afford if they paid their share of the military and maintained sufficient and equal readiness. This then drives demand in the USA for social programs that the USA cannot afford. So yes.
It depends on how carefully you examine the US Federal budget. While yes, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, $2.841T, revenue is only $3.44T (plus state $2.11T; local $1.47T) Total Military is ~$1T before military retirement benefits. So military and benefits alone > Income.
So then we have ~1.1T in debt, which includes all US government discretionary spending on EVERYTHING, of which only about 600B are for other than benefits and military spending. So we have to finance our entire federal government expenditures because we pay policing the world.
The combined military expenditure of EU member states amounts to just over is €192.5 billion. This represents 1.55% of European Union GDP. the military expenditure of the United States €503 billion. This represents 4.66% of United States GDP or 300% off EU.
However, this does not include the actual war and deployment costs which brings the number to €886 billon, or 5% of GDP €17.52T. It’s not easy to account for readiness, since the europeans spend money but cannot deploy fighting forces, this means EU’s low returns on spending.
Which only increases the asymmetry. in other words, the european expenditures are relatively worthless compared to american and british expenditures. (Outside of France in Africa, and the British in the world – which will soon depart the EU.)
So this is why Trump is agitated at everyone ‘free riding’ on the american middle class.
(Whiny Closing: France in particular is the enemy of western civilization and german failure to counter french interambitions to rule all of europe like a french monarchical despot is the causal problem, and a female german minster as well as her female defense ministers are exacerbating the problem. Conversely it is in european interests to ally german technology and culture with russian resources and labor, and instead of empowering france to parasitically prey upon europe as she has always intended, to provide a balance of powers between the latin, german, slavic, and russian sectors.)