“The number one issue is not NATO, not even Ukraine, as serious as that is. The number one issue is the displacement of Chinese exports that are going to the U.S. and will now go to Europe,” said Anthony Gardner, who served as U.S. ambassador to the European Union just before Trump’s first mandate.

“There probably will be a significant displacement effect at an incredibly fragile time, where many industries are barely scraping by. That will have enormous consequences, potentially promoting deindustrialization and populist parties, a drift to the right as these people search for answers, often extreme answers to their questions. This is very real and it could happen pretty quickly.”

Governments worry too that the EU will be squeezed between the Big Two geopolitical heavyweights, Beijing and Washington.  

“We don’t have the luxury of only looking at the immediate impact of U.S. tariffs on EU goods. The ripple effect of changing trade flows as a result of U.S. tariffs on China might come crashing down on us sooner than we’d like,” said one EU diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss how Trump’s tariff threats were playing in Brussels.

Europe’s concerns are justified … up to a point. EU countries would indeed feel the heat of a trade war with China, which would depress trade and growth at a time when Germany, its largest and most export-driven economy, is expected to suffer its second year of negative growth.

Yet, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe would actually be hit less hard than other regions. Gross domestic product would fall by 0.14 percent in the first year of a Trump trade war, and by 0.2 percent in the longer term, the think tank estimates — far less than the decline that the two main antagonists would suffer.