Overcoming deep divisions among its members, the European Union on Friday gave the green light to a comprehensive trade deal with four South American countries that would create one of the world’s largest free trade zones and connect markets covering more than 700 million people.
The agreement offers a stark contrast to the heightened aggression displayed by the Trump administration this week. As Europe worked to expand the era of economic cooperation, the United States, its once close ally, showed that it preferred coercion to cooperation.
In Brussels, European leaders negotiated and revised rules to reach an agreement. Across the Atlantic, President Trump authorized military raids to overthrow the Venezuelan president and seize two tankers as part of a plan to seize billions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan oil. He then escalated his threats against Colombia, Cuba and Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.
To some extent, Trump’s confrontational approach and willingness to engage in trade wars helped seal a deal between the 27-nation European Union and four South American nations in the Mercosur trading bloc that had hung in the balance for a quarter-century.
In fact, over the past year, countries around the world have increased their efforts to forge trade partnerships that do not involve the United States.
Mr. Trump’s policies are helping to “create a world without America,” said Robert Z. Lawrence, a professor of international trade and investment at Harvard. And “it doesn’t just apply to trade,” he added.
For example, other countries continued to gather at G20, health and climate summits even if the United States did not attend.
“In the short term, Trump is able to impose his will,” Lawrence said, “but is he creating a lasting foundation on which America can interact with the rest of the world?”
The European Union’s agreement with Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, as well as Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay has long met with resistance from agricultural interests and environmentalists in Europe.
Critics argued that South American producers did not meet European standards on pesticides, deforestation, animal treatment and labor rights. Farmers, particularly chicken and beef producers, fear that cheap imports would affect their livelihoods.
On Thursday, French farmers drove tractors through police barricades and blocked streets around the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to protest against the Mercosur agreement.
But European carmakers and pharmaceutical makers in Germany, Spain and elsewhere have been eager to gain access to Mercosur’s huge market. Bolivia, which recently joined the Union, will eventually be eligible to participate in the agreement.
To win over Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and other skeptics, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, offered last-minute concessions, including early access to 45 billion euros ($52 billion) in agricultural aid.
On Friday it was clear that the strategy was working. France, Poland, Austria, Ireland and Hungary reiterated their opposition to the blockbuster trade deal, according to diplomats familiar with the negotiations who were not authorized to speak publicly. Belgium abstained from voting. But Italy’s support provided the necessary majority. Ms von der Leyen could travel to Paraguay next week to officially sign the agreement.
The European Parliament must also approve the treaty.
The agreement is intended to reduce tariffs on European products exported to South America and South American goods shipped to Europe. Proponents argued that the deal would also provide access to a source of key raw materials other than China.
The deal is being signed by a government led by a close ally of Mr. Trump, Javier Milei, the Argentine president, and another by a frequent opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president. And it is about a region of the world that Mr. Trump sees as a backyard of the United States that should be managed and dominated by Washington.
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in November, defending the government’s bombing of boats allegedly transporting drugs.
Since then, this has expanded to control some of the continent’s natural resources and economies. Mr. Trump said this week that the United States would “rule Venezuela” and pledged to seize 30 million to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil and control the proceeds from the sale.
The new policy, called the “Donroe Doctrine,” is an update of President James Monroe’s 1823 declaration that aimed to curb European influence in Latin America.
This is “the most bellicose version of the Monroe Doctrine,” said Greg Grandin, a historian at Yale who has written extensively on Latin America.
The administration’s latest National Security Strategy explicitly states that the United States intends to “make it more difficult for competitors outside the hemisphere to increase their influence in the region.” It is unclear whether a free trade agreement with Europe would fall into this category in the government’s eyes.
However, China’s economic and political interests in the region certainly apply.
China is South America’s largest trading partner. Chinese loans and investments have financed the construction of bridges, ports and energy infrastructure. And more than 20 countries in the region have already joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
In May, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced an additional $9 billion credit line for the region at a meeting with Latin American and Caribbean officials in Beijing.
Brazil is also a partner in the BRIC group, which includes China, Russia and India.
But China’s industrial subsidies and harsh export policies are evidence that Beijing is no more interested in complying with international free trade agreements than the United States, said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Brussels.
For countries like Brazil that want trade partnerships based on open markets and legal agreements, “Europe is kind of the only game out there,” Kirkegaard said, “because the other two major economies have no interest at all in the rules.”
Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels.