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Posted on 05/25/2026 6:49:10 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Since the end of World War II, the United States has spent trillions of dollars defending Europe. After defeating the Nazis, America rebuilt the European continent with the Marshall Plan and shielded it from Soviet aggression while propping up European economies through subsidies and investments.
We bailed out failing governments. We airlifted food into Berlin when it was being choked off by the Soviet Union. We sent military aid. We ultimately saved Europe from communism.
And instead of gratitude, we receive lectures, censorship of American speech on European platforms, punitive fines against our tech companies, and open disdain for our values and way of life.
This week, the contempt was on full display in Germany. Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared he would not advise his own children, or presumably any young Germans, to study or work in America “because of the social climate that has suddenly developed there.” He made the United States out to be a vast wasteland where educated Americans struggle to find basic jobs. This comes from a country grappling with economic stagnation, energy crises, and demographic decline.
With a stunning sense of entitlement, Europe believes it has a right to American taxpayer generosity. For too long, they have underinvested in their own defense while expecting Washington to foot the bill.
During his first term, President Trump demanded that NATO live up to its treaty obligations by spending 5 percent of its GDP on defense. Many European nations fell woefully short, content to let American taxpayers subsidize their security while they funded their generous welfare states. Even after Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe continued to line Moscow’s pockets by purchasing its natural gas.
This pattern of dependency extends beyond military matters. European governments impose strict price controls on life-saving prescription drugs developed in the United States, capping what they will pay American manufacturers. To sustain the massive research and development costs required for new cures, companies naturally recoup those European losses in the freer US market.
The result? Americans end up subsidizing Europe’s healthcare systems, paying significantly higher prices so Europeans can enjoy lower ones.
President Trump has made this much clear—no longer will the United States tolerate being the world’s unwitting benefactor. Policies aimed at fairer pricing, a more level playing field, and reciprocity are essential to end this imbalance.
That’s why US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, chief health department adviser Chris Klomp, German Ambassador Jens Hanefeld, and the rest of the Trump administration took the unprecedented step of demanding that Germany raise their own costs on prescription drugs. If a drug costs $10 in Germany, there is no reason Americans should pay $1,000 for it. This plan not only saves Americans money but will make life-saving medications more affordable for those who need them most.
Germany is a particular offender when it comes to free riding off America. Rebuilt after World War II with American dollars, still protected by American forces and bases on its soil, Germany nonetheless just slapped steep price controls on US-made medications. Having long benefited from Uncle Sam, they now want us to pay even more. President Trump knew he needed to act, and he did.
Chancellor Merz’s outburst reveals a simple truth—Europe believes it can benefit from America’s generosity without having to pay for any of it. Ending subsidies, demanding increased defense spending, reducing drug prices, and restoring balance in trade is not an “assault on democracy” but a necessity after decades of imbalance.
Alliances are a two-way street. Even as President Trump is fighting the tyrannical Iranian regime to wrest open the Strait of Hormuz, our “allies” just sit on their hands, expecting American firepower to keep the oil flowing.
Alliances are a two-way street. Even as President Trump is fighting the tyrannical Iranian regime to wrest open the Strait of Hormuz, our “allies” just sit on their hands, expecting American firepower to keep the oil flowing and protect them from Iranian ballistic missiles capable of reaching European cities with nuclear weapons.
The United States has not abandoned Europe but wants it to become more independent and economically viable. Europe can choose to rise to the occasion as genuine partners or watch the relationship evolve into something far more transactional. The choice is theirs, but the days of riding America’s coattails are numbered.
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The EU has become a leftist dictatorship who have nothing in common with us (except our violent leftists).
It’s way past time to take care of America first. We need to clean up our government, get rid of illegals, and restore law and order.
Among a certain subset of posters on this forum, that one is a general 'tell' on who is a foreigner and who is domestic. It bleeds through even when they try to mask it.
Not 100% accurate, but gives a pretty good guess.
Impossible!
Every well informed American knows that Israel controls USA foreign policy and military spending.
If our job is to defend Europe - what is their job?
Providing welfare benefits to a massive amount of 3rd world invaders.
The second thing I'll add is Breton Woods. You'll often hear Europeans waxing nostalgic about how great Breton Woods was. Yeah, it was great....for them! We adopted a fixed rate exchange system and set the rates of exchange at a time when Europe's economies had been flattened. They locked in extremely low exchange rates against the dollar. Then as their economies recovered, they still remained locked in at that lower rate. This made European goods much cheaper on the US market and American goods much more expensive on the European market. Along with the Marshal plan, Defense, the huge subsidy in Pharmaceuticals and medical devices, the US was allowing them to trade with us on extremely lopsided trade terms in their favor.
Trump has been doing what we really should have done in the 1960s and started weening us off of all that. They're fully recovered. We don't need any more giveaways to them.
Having lived in 4 European countries, the most galling thing to me was not even that they were freeloading. It was that they were incredibly snotty putting on airs about how their socialism at home was oh so superior to American "brutal capitalism". I told them over and over again that if we were not subsidizing them massively, they would not be able to pay for the socialism at home.....ie the "European Social Model." It wasn't superior. It was a freaking charity case.
All of the above is true. I would add a couple more. America allowed very one sided trade deals. How many Fords or Chevys do you see on European roads? Why not? During the 1950s when the US was trying to get European economies back on their feet, we allowed them to protect their markets against American goods but simultaneously gave them unfettered access to our markets.
We didn’t do it out of charity. There was a real concern that they could have gone communist, even without the Red Army. The Communists were very popular in France and Italy, and they almost took over.
In Paris, right after liberation, the Communists seized control of the city, and were eliminating their opposition by accusing them all of being collaborators with the Nazis. DeGaulle came and put a stop to it, just in time.
I was never in favor in supporting the world much less Europe. Stand or fall on your own merits, we Americans don’t need to be taxed to death to support any country.
Back in the day, growing up and living in a fairly European-descended suburb of Philadelphia and later NYC, I can tell you that some of the immigrants and 1st Gen Americans would tear up when PBS played the National Anthem before going off the air. It was not uncommon to find pictures of Jesus and FDR in close proximity to one another in their homes.
They were also very anti-Communist. Why? Because they or their parents or grandparents experienced the murder and mayhem of those regimes. Indeed, during my career I worked with people who lived under communism in Europe and had zero love for the “good old days.”
And yet, in isolated spots, they’d bad mouth America and Reagan and wax eloquently about communists. WHILE LIVING HERE!
Europe is committing suicide by muslim. We need to move away and let them sink.
So true - and now we reaching the end point of that snotty, preening false moral superiority facade
It’s really over the top for Merz to be criticizing America as a place he cannot send his children when his political party has turned Germany into cesspool of dangerous no go zones where native Germans are in fear of their lives from the millions of violent third world phony “migrant refugees “ that have flooded Germany and who are collapsing the EU social welfare systems
I grew up in a pragmatic and frugal America. I don't see much of that anymore. Especially among our young.
“European governments impose strict price controls on life-saving prescription drugs developed in the United States, capping what they will pay American manufacturers”
Sad but true.
And nobody can tell me any more that this disaster was not deliberately orchestrated by our beloved EU-DeepState-neocommie overlords. After all, the left is out to destroy. Leftism has never, since its origins in 1789, been about anything but destruction.
Bless their hearts, as they say in Texas…
100% agree
AND Germany’s industrial sector is collapsing as the country rapidly deindustrializes. Look at economic growth rates for the US and for Germany over the last 20 years. Germany per capita is now only about $1000 bucks per year more than Mississippi. The other 49 states are ahead of it.
I completely understand the one sided deals we gave them in the late 40s when their countries had been completely destroyed and US GDP was 50% of the entire world's GDP. We could afford it and it made perfect sense to stabilize the democracies we had just sacrificed the lives of 400,000 of our citizens to install. Plus we wanted to have real allies in case it came to another world war against the Commies. It was a very wise policy and one I wholeheartedly endorse.
Its just that it should have gradually ended by the mid 1960s to 1970 at the absolute latest. Nixon ended Breton Woods in 1972 because it was sucking gold out of our country and we just couldn't afford such largesse any longer. We went on allowing them to have very lopsided trade deals and subsidizing their defense for the next 50 years when in reality, those should have both been brought to an end.
Not only was it 100% intentional - it was malicious from the start and totally funded by American and EU taxpayers
We funded our own destruction and the political and government officials who forced this on were connected to NGOs and charities who received hundreds of billions of dollars and euros to run the migrant human trafficking network
The EU was ground zero for the Green Movement. The Greens got their start as a Russian funded communist front group to undermine NATO and prevent the basing of US missiles in Europe
After the fall of communism they grew in influence due to global warming and also due to the fact that EU has limited oil and gas reserves which put them at a huge disadvantage to places like the US that do
If they can outlaw fossils fuels then the EU is in a better position to compete in theory. In practice - the focus on green energy schemes has killed the EU industrial base
The Left destroys everything it gets control of
We are entering the next phase of the Industrial Revolution and Europe is so economically weak and behind the curve in energy and technology base that they are in danger of falling into permanent decline
The new tech boom is capitol and energy intensive and the EU is critically short on both. Add to that the lack of dynamic and talented young people and the EU is going to become irrelevant in technology
The new technology world is a dynamic, fast paced high risk environment where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer
The EU is teed up to fall to permanent poor gets poorer status
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