“Trump’s return to the White House is a jolt to push the European Union to invest in its own defence and economic and technological revival.” Comment. (Answer in 250 words)

- “Trump’s return to the White House is a jolt to push the European Union to invest in its own defence and economic and technological revival.” Comment. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Trump's return converted European strategic autonomy from a French slogan into a budget line. The jolt is real, but the Union is buying capability faster than it is building the authority to use it.

Body
1. The shock: tariff pressure culminating in the July 2025 framework setting a fifteen per cent baseline on EU goods, Vice-President Vance's Munich Security Conference speech in February 2025, and the brief suspension of US intelligence sharing with Ukraine that March.
2. Defence spending has moved: the ReArm Europe and Readiness 2030 package of March 2025, worth up to 800 billion euros, including the 150-billion-euro SAFE loan instrument and a national escape clause in the Stability and Growth Pact.
3. Germany turned: the Bundestag amended the constitution in March 2025 to exempt defence spending above one per cent of GDP from the debt brake, alongside a 500-billion-euro infrastructure fund.
4. NATO followed: the Hague Summit of June 2025 set five per cent of GDP by 2035, split between core defence and resilience.
5. Economic and technological revival: the Draghi report (2024) put the annual investment gap near 800 billion euros, and the Competitiveness Compass and Clean Industrial Deal followed in 2025, alongside the Chips Act and enforcement of the Digital Markets and AI Acts.
6. The constraint is internal: unanimity in foreign policy, Hungary's veto, fragmented procurement in which most spending leaves the Union, and divergent Baltic and Mediterranean threat perceptions.
7. Dependence persists: strategic lift, satellite intelligence and the nuclear umbrella remain American.

Conclusion
Trump has done what Macron's "brain death" remark of 2019 could not, making autonomy expensive to refuse. But the EU is acquiring autonomy of means without autonomy of decision, and until the veto goes the revival will be industrial rather than strategic.