When Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone in 2007, the global landscape looked very different. The subprime mortgage crisis was beginning to surface in the United States, Romania and Bulgaria had just joined the European Union, India crossed the one-trillion-dollar economic mark for the first time, and trade talks between Delhi and Brussels were formally launched. Nearly two decades later, the outcome of those talks has finally materialized.
On January 27, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the EU–India Free Trade Agreement as the “mother of all deals.” The pact targets a market of nearly two billion consumers and represents about one-quarter of global GDP. Under the agreement, India will partially open its traditionally protectionist domestic market, creating expanded export opportunities in manufacturing and services. In return, European automobiles and alcoholic beverages are expected to become more affordable for India’s growing middle class.
But the agreement goes well beyond trade. It encompasses defense and security cooperation, commitments to multilateralism, labor mobility, and collaboration across multiple strategic sectors—underscoring a broader geopolitical realignment.
The obvious question is: why now? The answer, increasingly, points to Donald Trump.
Although negotiations had resumed in 2022 amid post-COVID efforts to de-risk global supply chains and reduce dependence on China, it was not Beijing but Washington that ultimately accelerated the deal. Early talks collapsed in 2013 over disputes involving automobiles, alcohol, agriculture, and dairy. What changed was the global response to Trump’s second term.
Even before taking office again in December 2024, Trump’s remarks about asserting U.S. control over Greenland rattled Europe, triggering a sense of strategic abandonment among long-standing allies. On his first day back in office, Trump imposed harsh tariffs on neighboring Canada and Mexico. He then declared a so-called “Liberation Day,” slapping tariffs on 90 countries worldwide. India faced tariffs of up to 50 percent—25 percent of which were explicitly linked to its purchase of Russian oil.
More recently, as NATO countries increased troop deployments around Greenland, Washington again weaponized tariffs against the EU and the United Kingdom. The result has been a growing perception in Europe that the United States is no longer just unreliable—but an outright strategic threat.
Against this backdrop, concepts like “de-risking” and “decoupling” have re-emerged in European policy debates. This time, however, the focus is not China, but Trump’s America. The issue extends beyond supply chains to strategic resilience against coercion. France’s recent move to encourage the use of domestic video-conferencing platforms instead of U.S.-based Zoom reflects this shift.
As the United States retreats into a modernized version of the Monroe Doctrine—consolidating influence in the Western Hemisphere—the Indo-Pacific, once central to U.S. strategy, is opening up to deeper engagement with the European Union. The EU–India trade deal is the most significant manifestation of this trend, but it is far from isolated.
Belgium has recently concluded an agreement with South America’s Mercosur bloc, with more deals in the pipeline. India, meanwhile, has finalized trade agreements with the United Kingdom and New Zealand in recent months. Long-held ambitions around multilateralism, strategic autonomy, and even de-dollarization—once largely championed by countries outside the West—are now gaining tangible momentum.
As the rest of the world moves forward through new alliances and frameworks, the irony is stark: under the banner of “America First,” the United States appears to be standing increasingly alone.
