Nato’s Rutte meets Trump with Europe’s security on the line

Good morning.

Today, I preview the high-stakes White House encounter for Nato head Mark Rutte, and France’s industry minister lays out his plan to save European steel.

Tomorrow I will be in Poland for the Warsaw European Conversation, an FT-partnered event to discuss the continent’s future with senior politicians, officials and experts. Sign up for virtual participation here.

Lion’s den

Mark Rutte goes to the White House today for one of the most consequential meetings between a Nato secretary-general and his primary taskmaster since the founding of the military alliance.

Context: Donald Trump has threatened, with varying degrees of menace and seriousness, to stop protecting Nato allies if they don’t increase defence spending, to annex Greenland from Nato ally Denmark, and to pull out of the 32-member alliance altogether. The US is by far the biggest contributor to Nato in terms of defence spending and capabilities.

Rutte sits down with Trump with Europe’s security on the line. European officials have for weeks been nervously exchanging rumours of an impending US announcement of a troop withdrawal from the continent, the cessation of joint exercises with allies, or a drastic reduction of US security commitments.

Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden deployed an additional 20,000 US troops to Europe after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some of whom have already returned. Most officials expect the rest of that surge to be brought home soon, while some think Trump will go further and reduce below the long-term average of 80,000 on permanent rotation.

Another option is to reduce the US contribution to Nato’s $5bn central budget. It currently pays around 16 per cent — the same amount as Germany.

Nato diplomats insist that nothing has been decided, but similarly, nothing can be ruled out. Most expect that any major US announcement would wait for the alliance’s leaders’ summit in June, but are unwilling to bet against Trump’s mercurial nature.

And while Trump’s presidency has roiled all of Europe’s leaders, Rutte has perhaps the toughest job of all.

In his previous job as Dutch prime minister he proved adept at managing Trump, and was chosen for the Nato job partly due to his Trump-whispering reputation. But today Rutte must walk a seemingly impossible tightrope of standing up for 31 of the military alliance’s members while also bowing to the whims of its most powerful — and irreplaceable — one.

“It’s hard for anyone to go to Washington and stand up to Trump,” said one senior western official. “It’s hardest of all for Rutte, given Trump essentially pays half his salary.”

Chart du jour: Flat

The bankruptcy of Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt teaches Europe a lesson: stick to what you’re good at, writes Lex.

Full Metal Jacket

The EU’s safeguards for steel need to be strengthened and extended as soon as possible, French industry minister Marc Ferracci told Barbara Moens. 

Context: US President Donald Trump yesterday imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, escalating a transatlantic trade war.

Next week, the European Commission will publish a Steel Action Plan to help the industry. Ferracci is urging Brussels to go the whole hog and allow more state aid to flow to industries that face heavily subsidised competition, such as steel, batteries and electric vehicles. 

Ferracci also wants to go further than just extending the current safeguard measures, which Brussels introduced in 2018 (and must end in 2026). Paris also wants to strengthen them, for example by lowering the thresholds or increasing the duties.

“In steel, there are companies who are suspending their investments today, or even considering closing sites because they are asking, for the moment without obtaining them, stronger safeguard measures than the ones that exist today,” he said.

Steelmaker ArcelorMittal is one of the companies which has put investments in greener forms of steelmaking in Europe, including in France, on hold. 

The US tariffs on metal imports from other countries also risks a potential flood of steel imports diverting to the more open European market, officials have warned.

A senior EU official said yesterday that Brussels “will be monitoring very closely, whether it’s Chinese or Canadian steel that cannot enter the US market, that the steel does not end up in our markets through dumping or through any other unfair practices”.

Supporting European industry is not just for economic reasons, Ferracci stressed: “You can’t have guns without steel, you can’t have missiles without chemicals. We need a global approach and have to link geopolitics and the Ukraine crisis with the necessity to move quickly on re-industrialisation.” 

What to watch today

1. Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte meets US President Donald Trump in Washington.

2. EU presidents Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa meet South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in Cape Town.

3. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko meets Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Now read these

• Nuclear deployments: Poland’s president tells the FT that the US should move nuclear warheads to his country, as a show of strength to Moscow.

• Enduring war: As peace talks progress, Ukraine’s weary troops know that even if Washington abandons them, they must be prepared to fight on.

• Europe’s start-ups: An FT Special Report on the emerging tech players using AI to reimagine their business models and compete with the US.