The EU Puts its Euros on Gavin

 by Thomas Kolbe

Donald Trump’s opposition to climate policy and mass immigration is putting massive pressure on Europe. There, preparations are underway to support California governor Gavin Newsom. He is expected, as the 48th president, to prevent a continuation of Trump’s policies.

America remains a country of high social mobility and upward opportunity -- something we no longer see on today’s European continent. It may sound kitschy to many Europeans, yet America's vibrant economic centers, high geographic mobility, and the flexibility of its people still create the conditions for this unique phenomenon.

Admittedly, the narrative of the “land of unlimited opportunity” may sound exaggerated today -- something akin to self-promotion. Yet at its core, it still holds true. Can one still make something of oneself in the U.S.? Donald Trump’s deregulation program, combined with tax cuts for businesses as well as small and medium incomes, has in any case helped to revive this promise of upward mobility.

Trump’s policies go hand in hand with the elimination of fiscal privileges and subsidies. His goal: the systematic dismantling of the fiscally secured and media-backed strongholds of power of a socialist apparatus that reflects the spirit of European regulatory policy.

Put simply, under Trump, American nationalism and a rejection of ideological engineering have returned to the political agenda. With intense competition and market-driven policies at home, alongside a trade and tariff strategy reminiscent of presidents like Alexander Hamilton and William McKinley, this forms a clear countermodel to his predecessors. They had significantly advanced the European model of climate socialism as a tool of power consolidation.

For the record: it was President Barack Obama who, in 2009, identified carbon dioxide as a lever of power, integrated European regulatory frameworks, and began systematically undermining the traditional American values of individual liberty, mobility, free markets, and minimal government.

The public outrage over Trump’s reversal in key questions of political power architecture stems largely from the fact that too many had grown comfortable in a world of subsidies, NGOs, and public-sector employment. European climate socialists now pin their hopes on Gavin Newsom. In two and a half years, he is expected to enter the White House and initiate a return to the status quo ante.

In Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and London, they are likely already counting the days until a possible political shift in Washington.

Trump has fallen out of favor with Europeans because his agenda of prioritizing American national interests mercilessly exposes the ideological contradictions and intellectual weakness of European socialism. Whether in foreign policy -- where the U.S. asserts itself forcefully toward countries like Venezuela or Iran -- or in its confrontation with the climate lobby and the left-wing NGO complex, Trump’s policies reflect the will of many Americans to finally address the consequences of globalist policies and draw the logical conclusion: dismantling this socialist overreach.

It is telling that his migration policy meets fierce resistance in the strongholds of Democratic Party power. Where migration and poverty industries have taken root, the immigration authority ICE encounters near civil-war-like resistance.

Yet it is not Trump’s fault that the European social model lies in ruins.

Europe suffers from a lack of self-criticism and a general unwillingness to confront its own ideological failures. Meanwhile, nuclear cooling towers are demolished, coal seams flooded, and gas infrastructure dismantled. The politics of ideological immaturity collide with Washington’s hard-nosed approach and the necessary repair work on a deeply damaged social and economic body.

No matter who the Republican Party nominates as Trump’s potential successor -- be it J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio -- the German press has already made its choice. It longs for America’s return to European-style climate socialism: more comfortable, more predictable, and promising continued access to public funding -- even for its own future. To underline this, the German weekly WirtschaftsWoche (Business Week) recently published a guest article by Gavin Newsom.

Newsom seeks to persuade foreign governments to view California as an independent economic entity -- the world’s fifth-largest economy, still embodying the spirit of boundless opportunity.

The implicit message is clear: California’s economic stagnation is not the result of high taxes or aggressive climate policies in the European mold -- nor of its war on oil and gas -- but solely the fault of Donald Trump’s tariff policy.

California is Europe in miniature -- a shadow of the Old Continent cast across the United States. It now finds itself exposed by Washington’s market-driven reforms, which throw its model into stark contrast. The results are increasingly visible: one system succeeds, the other falters.

In his guest contribution, Newsom naturally avoids addressing the consequences of California’s climate policies. As in Europe, CO2 costs are placing enormous strain on industry. Companies are leaving -- just as they are in Germany -- and relocating to states like Texas or Florida, where industrial production is still valued.

Newsom’s socialist course, which began in 2019, is evident not only in rising public debt. More striking is the emergence of a full-fledged poverty management industry. Years of open-border policies enabled the development of a deeply corrupt system of dependency management. California has become a magnet for illegal migrants, drug addicts, and other lost individuals; at the same time, the political framework sustains an extraction economy similar to what we observe in Germany’s migration sector. The parallels are striking.

The Sunshine State, once a place of aspiration for so many, now resembles -- especially in its urban centers -- the kind of social decay familiar from Europe’s migration-driven slums.

Hardly a model to be proud of -- yet, for WirtschaftsWoche, seemingly the ideal form of postmodern urbanity.

Newsom frequently points to the success of Silicon Valley, the powerhouse of digital innovation. Yet this engine of growth quite literally fell into his lap; he has contributed nothing of substance to enhancing the state’s innovative capacity. Silicon Valley existed before Newsom -- and it will exist after him, if necessary in a different location, in new form, after escaping the suffocating grip of bureaucratic overreach.

A final word on those Europeans who hope for Trump’s failure: with Newsom and a return of the United States to European climate socialism and mass immigration, capital flight from the EU might temporarily slow. It is entirely possible that European leadership could buy time by pointing to a faltering America. But it would change nothing about Europe’s decline -- only delay the inevitable.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/the_eu_puts_its_euros_on_gavin.html