PRESTWICK, Scotland — The handshake trade deal between the EU and the U.S. has come under a lot of fire, but EU officials insist it’s the best the bloc could do if it wanted to avoid a damaging tariff war with Donald Trump.

European countries were also in a weak position thanks to their own past decisions. Slashing defense spending after the end of the Cold War left them dependent on the U.S. military for security, while cutting off Russian energy exports left the bloc reliant on American liquefied natural gas.

“It was never going to be between a good and a great deal, but between a bad and less bad one — we certainly believe this is less bad,” said a European Commission official, granted anonymity to speak freely, who called Brussels’ approach “strategic realism.” 

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s negotiation space with Trump was always much smaller than many in Europe would have liked. The still-vague EU-U.S. deal took a lot of flak for political reasons, with complaints rife about how the bloc — despite its economic clout — submitted to a Trumpian worldview on trade.

The power differential was even on display in how the leaders got to Scotland. Von der Leyen and her team flew in on two small chartered business jets; Trump arrived on Air Force One with an escort of U.S. fighters, while his sons and their families were in a black-and-gold Boeing 757 belonging to the Trump family empire.

Politicians have been scathing about the deal — although national capitals weakened the EU’s position by lobbying fiercely against any Brussels retaliation to Trump’s tariffs in order to protect their domestic industries.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou called the agreement “submission,” while German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil denounced it as “weak.”

Former Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said the EU effectively condoned Trump’s bullying, cementing “a new trading order where tariffs are accepted as a geopolitical cudgel.”

“Just the way [Trump] made von der Leyen come to his golf course in Scotland and then put up his thumb almost like a Roman emperor — that says it all,” Karel De Gucht, Malmström’s predecessor as the bloc’s trade chief, told Belgian daily De Standaard.

But if politicians gnashed their teeth at the perceived unfairness of the one-sided tariffs, analysts breathed a sigh of relief. 

“We believe that the EU-US trade deal was the best available for Europe,” read one note from investment bank Goldman Sachs. “The agreement puts the EU at the more favourable end of the international spectrum despite the EU’s comparatively large goods trade surplus and the US’s geopolitical leverage over Europe.”

A comment from Deutsche Bank struck a similar tone, noting that with the deal, “the worse outcomes are avoided.”

Pain threshold

Brussels is also cheering itself up by pointing out that London’s deal with Trump is even worse.

Despite the U.K. getting a 10 percent tariff rate — better than the EU’s 15 percent — the U.K. rate is not a ceiling, said the EU official. Cheese is an example where the EU gets a 15 percent tariff but the U.K. faces 10 percent plus another 14.9 percent that the U.S. charges on cheese imports. 

“The 15 percent rate has caught the EU precisely at its pain threshold,” said senior researcher David Kleimann at ODI Global. It keeps the EU relatively competitive compared to the rates facing other economies. Kleimann also pointed out that the American economy has a very “limited ability” to replace highly innovative European products as the existing capacity is low and investments in new factories would be hard with a tight labor force.

The Commission official also stressed that the EU avoided an escalating tariff war like that between China and the U.S. “We’re playing the long game,” they said, adding that such a retaliation ladder is “hard to retreat from.”

According to Dan Mullaney, a former U.S. assistant trade representative for Europe, the EU couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. “It’s not clear that following the tougher China course of immediate retaliation would have been successful.”

China faced steep consequences for its retaliatory approach. While tariffs of over 100 percent may have dropped to 30 percent, ongoing negotiations risk triggering a return to those higher rates. Canada is also being penalized for retaliating against Trump’s tariffs.

“It’s hard to see how that’s a better outcome than 15 percent all-in tariffs,” Mullaney said, calling the Commission’s approach the right one. He also added that Trump voiced “unprecedented public recognition … of the value and importance of the U.S.-EU relationship. That may prove transitory, but it’s significant.”

It’s the alliance, stupid

The reasoning in Brussels is that avoiding a trade war is about more than just trade or even the economy; it’s also about preventing Trump from withdrawing from the transatlantic alliance and ending support for Ukraine.

Von der Leyen pointed at NATO’s new and higher defense spending targets minutes after announcing the deal in Scotland. “Just a few weeks after the NATO summit, this is the second building block for reaffirming the transatlantic partnership,” she told a handful of Brussels-based reporters before heading back to the EU capital.

EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič, after his plane had landed back in Brussels, told POLITICO that the handshake at Trump’s golf course was about keeping the alliance alive. 

At a press conference a day later, he again stressed: “It’s not only about … trade: It’s about security, it is about Ukraine, it is about current geopolitical volatility.”

Brussels is keenly aware it can’t risk the trade dispute spiralling into the military sphere, where European countries are not currently prepared to mount a credible defense against Russia and to continue arming Ukraine without U.S. help.

In Malmström’s words: “Maybe this was the only deal possible.”

De Gucht also admitted that more is at stake than trade. “Imagine if there would be no deal and a trade war — do you really believe Trump would still keep supporting Ukraine, then?” he said. “Or rather: that he’d still sell weapons to Ukraine?”

Koen Verhelst reported from Prestwick and Brussels. Antonia Zimmermann, Carlo Martuscelli and Jakob Weizman reported from Brussels. Hanne Cokelaere contributed to this report.