'Watch him sweat': Europe reportedly sharpens knives as it sees 'self-destructive' Trump

Jakob Hanke Vela, the bureau chief at the German economics paper Handelsblatt, has been chatting with European trade officials in recent days who are holding off on launching a counterattack to President Donald Trump's trade war — largely because they believe he's sufficiently hurting himself.

Writing on X, Vela relayed some of the whispers he's been hearing from European officials who are amazed as Trump takes a wrecking ball to his own economy.

"Nobody in the Commission thought that the U.S. government would be this stupid and self-destructive," one EU official told him. "That they would blow up their own country by letting ChatGPT make their trade policy."

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Vela added that European officials have been quietly sharpening their knives and preparing "brutal countermeasures" against Trump, but are in no rush to implement them because they don't want to give Trump a scapegoat to blame for a deteriorating American economy.

"Inside the Commission and among EU trade ministers, the mood is calm — almost mocking, reports Vela. "'We’ll just let them stew,' another senior official says. 'If Trump doesn’t blink by the end of the month, we’re ready to hit hard.' But for now? They'll watch him sweat."

Trump last week launched a sweeping series of tariffs against nearly every nation in the world, including on a remote island whose only notable inhabitants are penguins.

Ever since then, markets across the world have crashed and economists have drastically raised the odds of a recession hitting the American economy this year.