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As the voter base of the European far-right bears the consequences of the economic disruption unleashed by the American president, the nexus between Trump and the European far-right may start to crumble.
Image Source: Getty
In February 2025, Europe’s far-right leaders gathered in Madrid at an event hosted by Spain’s far-right Vox party. Under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again” (MEGA), the event was inspired by Trumpian ideology.
The European far-right’s affinity with United States (US) President Donald Trump’s populist worldview is well-known. They share similar conservative and nationalist outlooks on themes ranging from anti-migration and anti-establishment to Euroscepticism and hostility towards climate policy and multilateralism. Trump’s return to power in his second term was seen to validate and legitimise the ideas of the European far-right. As Hungary’s populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban reiterated at the MEGA event, “Yesterday we were the heretics, now we are the mainstream”. Influential figures within the Trump administration, such as tech billionaire Elon Musk, have explicitly aligned themselves with the European far-right, including Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), France’s Marine Le Pen, and Italy’s conservative League Party.
Trump’s return to power in his second term was seen to validate and legitimise the ideas of the European far-right.
Yet despite their broad ideological convergence with the MAGA (Make America Great Again) brigade, Washington’s tariffs and America first policies have disconcerted Europe’s far-right leaders given their direct impact on European national interests and economies.
On April 2, Trump announced a sweeping 20 percent tariff rate on European imports in addition to the previously imposed sectoral tariffs on metals and automobiles. Even though this rate has been temporarily reduced to 10 percent, the tariffs have rendered politicians of all colours in Europe nervous as they are estimated to impact European growth by 1.5 percent or 260 billion euros.
Many far-right politicians did what they do best, which is blame the European Union (EU). Vox’s president Santiago Abascal called out EU regulations and taxes as the greater danger. The AfD blamed Brussels for not reducing the high European tariffs on cars, while its leader Alice Weidel simultaneously criticised the tariffs “as fundamentally bad for free trade”.
There are widespread concerns that the tariffs would disproportionately impact the traditional voter bases of far-right parties, and impact economic growth in Europe, revealing a fundamental clash between the MAGA and MEGA agendas.
Based on her warm interpersonal ties with Trump, far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who described the tariffs as “wrong” but defended Vice-President JD Vance’s attack on Europe at the Munich Security Conference, descended into Washington on April 17 aiming to ease transatlantic trade tensions and pitch herself as an interlocutor between Brussels and Washington. With exports to the US valuing 70 billion euros, Italy maintains a significant trade surplus with the country, and a 10 percent tariff rate is expected to incur losses of 7 billion euros for the Italian economy. In other divergences, Italy still remains below the 2 percent threshold, spending only 1.49 percent of GDP towards NATO, which is far below Trump’s 5 percent expectation. While softening the tariffs remained an elusive goal despite Trump’s gushing of Meloni as a “friend” doing “a fantastic job and taking Europe by storm”, Meloni emphasised a mutually beneficial EU-US trade deal and the goal of “making the West great again” during her visit to the White House.
The party, struggling after Marine Le Pen’s disqualification from contesting French elections, will need to retain the support of its core electorate, in particular the working and middle classes expected to be hit hard by the tariffs and whom it has vowed to protect.
In France, despite general support for the far-right, Trump remains unpopular. The findings of a pre-US election YouGov poll revealed that Le Pen’s supporters preferred Democrat candidate Kamala Harris over Trump. Le Pen’s National Rally party had already distanced itself from the president’s more radical rhetoric to broaden its voter base. Simultaneously, the party, struggling after Marine Le Pen’s disqualification from contesting French elections, will need to retain the support of its core electorate, in particular the working and middle classes expected to be hit hard by the tariffs and whom it has vowed to protect.
The tariffs are also expected to garner losses of €4.3 billion in 2025 for the Spanish economy, with negative prospects for the agri-food sector and machinery and electrical equipment industries. Data from Spain’s Center for Sociological Research posits that the far-right Vox party is supported by “one in five farm workers and 10% of industrial workers”, who are likely to be harmed by the tariffs. In Hungary, the EU’s notorious outlier, headed by its far-right premier and ardent Trump supporter, Orban, tariffs will impact the country’s economic growth, which relies on the success of its automobile industry.
In general, Trump’s tariffs are expected to severely hit sectors such as automobiles, food and beverages, agriculture and those employed by these industries, thereby adversely impacting European farmers, winemakers, cheese producers and other manpower.
Despite the far-right’s Euroscepticism, only through the collective strength of the EU, which coordinates trade policy and its single market of 450 million consumers, can member states respond effectively to Trump’s trade wars. Far-right parties may walk a tightrope between balancing their ideological support for Trump while defending their economic interests by backing the EU response and maintaining domestic credibility. Whether they use their close ties with the Trump administration to forge bilateral deals for their nations or leverage their influence in favour of wider European interests remains to be seen.
Far-right parties may walk a tightrope between balancing their ideological support for Trump while defending their economic interests by backing the EU response and maintaining domestic credibility.
Meloni has so far struck a balance between maintaining close ties with the US president while advocating for European interests. During her visit to the White House, she spoke in favour of a transatlantic trade deal and convinced Trump to visit Rome soon, where she would facilitate his meetings with other European leaders. But as the voter base of the European far-right bears the consequences of the economic disruption unleashed by the American president, the nexus between Trump and the European far-right may start to crumble.
Shairee Malhotra is the Deputy Director of the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Shairee Malhotra is Deputy Director - Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation. Her areas of work include Indian foreign policy with a focus on ...
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