Description
The election of Donald Trump in the 2024 US elections has again brought to the fore serious questions regarding the future of transatlantic relations. Tensions over trade, security and industrial strategy have the potential to create a rupture in US-EU relations and threaten to destabilise the liberal international order. In this article, we interrogate the present tensions in US-EU relations by situating them in a broader context of the political economy of Atlantic order. We make two arguments. First, that the disruption represented by the second Trump administration needs to be understood in relation to a broader set of ‘Atlantic antagonisms’, old and new, which have long shaped relations between the US and Europe. In particular, we trace the development of a new set of antagonisms relating to trade and industrial strategy, which took shape during the age of neoliberal globalisation and erupted in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Second, we argue that these Atlantic antagonisms were historically managed through the institutions and rules of liberal international order, which served as a form of ‘release valve’ for pressures in US-EU relations. Under the contemporary conditions of global disorder, we conclude, that option might now be foreclosed.
