For decades, European nations have benefited from American strength, innovation, and generosity, without paying their fair share or offering reciprocal treatment. They happily take our protection, our products, our technology, and our money and turn around and lecture us about democracy and the economy.
It’s a rigged game, and the American people are paying the price.
Europe slaps high tariffs and endless regulations on American products, from agriculture to cars, while flooding our market with subsidized European goods. Worse still, the EU is actively targeting American tech companies, not because they’re doing anything wrong, but simply because they’re American and successful. That’s not competition. It’s economic sabotage.
It doesn’t end there. European countries pay far less than what Americans pay for the exact same prescription drugs made by American companies, funded by American investment and tested under American standards. By arbitrarily setting the price of medicines, foreign government bureaucrats decide which medicines to cover and which to exclude. As a result, patients in other wealthy countries only have access to an average of 43% of new medicines, compared to 87% for patients in the United States. These policies don’t just harm foreign patients, they’re bad for Americans, who are forced to pick up the difference.
A new analysis found that 26% of U.S. drug prices go toward offsetting the costs that other countries avoid. It’s a silent tax on every American patient – and we’ve been paying it for years.
While elites in Washington and Brussels are desperate to preserve the status quo, the American people are not. They know we’re being taken advantage of, and they’re ready for a President who will stop putting foreign interests first. It’s time to stop apologizing for our strength and start demanding respect for our contributions.
President Trump’s leadership is making it clear that the days of European freeloading are coming to an end. His bold, unapologetic vision for NATO and global trade is being carried forward by leaders like Vice President JD Vance, who is demanding that the EU stop treating America like a piggy bank. Their recent calls for fair burden-sharing and real accountability show exactly why America needs a new generation of conservative leadership willing to challenge globalist orthodoxy.
Enough is enough. Joe Biden and the Democrats were too busy chasing European approval and expanding government control to confront the fact that the rest of the world is taking advantage of us. They allowed this one-sided advantage to continue while Americans at home got buried. It’s a big reason why President Trump won all seven swing states, many of whom carried the brunt of this European abuse.
President Trump has always been unafraid to say what the political class won’t: America is being ripped off, and it’s time to fight back.
President Trump and VP Vance are standing up to freeloaders and fighting back against unfair trade deals. Now it’s time to put America First in healthcare as well. That means fighting CCP influence and bringing supply chains back to the United States, but it starts by forcing Europe and other wealthy nations to pay up. We can do that right now by using the tools of the U.S. government to push those nations to pay more for innovative therapies. Strong global trade agreements mean fair pricing and an end to the free ride for foreign countries, at the same time.
Only Trump will hold Europe accountable.
He’s done it before. He’ll do it again.
Matt Mowers is a EU-US Forum Founding Board Member and former Trump Administration Senior White House Advisor at the U.S. Department of State
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