The outcome of November’s presidential election is expected to have huge implications for Europe’s security and economy.
As US presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Donald Trump clashed in a televised debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, many across Europe watched in the hope of gleaning how the November election might affect the continent and the world as a whole.
Although both candidates expectedly focused on domestic issues, such as the economy, gun laws and abortion, both Harris and Trump touched upon several topics that could prove to be key to the future of Europe.
Here are the six key talking points for Europeans from the first — and likely only — debate between the two candidates.
Trump’s name-drops Orbán as an ally
Following Vice President Harris’ claims that some world leaders do not regard Trump as highly as he thinks, the former US president argued that Hungary’s Premier Viktor Orbán would back his administration.
“Let me just say about world leaders: Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men, they call him a strong man. He’s a tough person. Smart prime minister of Hungary,” Trump said.
“They said, ‘Why is the whole world blowing up? … ‘Because you need Trump back as president. They were afraid of him. China was afraid. And I don’t like to use the word ‘afraid’, but I’m just quoting him,” Trump went on.
“‘China was afraid of him. North Korea was afraid of him.’ Look at what’s going on with North Korea, by the way. He said, ‘Russia was afraid of him,'” he added, supposedly quoting Orbán.
“The most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president,” Trump said.
Harris replied that it was well-known that Trump “admires dictators” and “wants to be a dictator on day one”.
“It is well known that he said of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that he can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine,” she said.
‘Putin would eat you for lunch’, Harris tells Trump
When confronted over whether he supports Ukraine in Russia’s war of aggression against its neighbour, Trump dodged a straight answer by stating he wanted to “end the war” instead.
Although Trump said that it’s a war “that’s dying to be settled … I will get it settled before I even become president,” he offered no specifics on how he planned to accomplish that. “What I’ll do is I’ll speak to one and I’ll speak to the other,” he said. “I’ll get them together.”
Trump again stated that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine would have never happened if he had been in office in early 2022, stating that Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have respected him over Biden.
“I know Zelenskyy very well, and I know Putin very well,” he said. “They respect me. They don’t respect Biden.”
Trump did however reiterate that the Biden administration has spent more in comparison to Europe on military aid to Ukraine, despite the numbers showing the opposite.
Harris fired back, saying that if Trump in fact had been president during Moscow’s all-out assault, “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe,” with Poland being next in his crosshairs.
“Why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favour and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch,” she said.
“Because of our support, because of the air defence, the ammunition, the artillery, the Javelins, the Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country,” Harris highlighted, yet didn’t state how she planned to continue supporting Kyiv once in office.
Trump accuses Harris of ‘hating’ everyone in the Middle East
The Republican candidate for US president was also stumped as to how he would negotiate a peace deal between Israel and Hamas or what he would do to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
However, he repeated the same claim about how the Israel-Hamas war would have never happened if he were president, shifting to a baseless claim that Harris hates both Israel and the rest of the region.
“She hates Israel. She wouldn’t even meet with [Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu when he went to Congress to make a very important speech,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” Harris was seen mouthing in response to Trump’s claims. She met with Netanyahu one day later.
“If she’s president, I believe that Israel would not exist within two years from now, and I’ve been pretty good at predictions,” Trump stated, adding that Harris also hates the Arab population. “The whole place is going to get blown up,” he added.
“Look at what’s happening with the Houthis and Yemen. Look at what’s happening in the Middle East. This would have never happened. I will get that settled, and fast, and I will get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended,” he said. “If I’m president-elect, I’ll get it done before even becoming president.”
In turn, Harris said that as president, she would “always give Israel the ability to defend itself”, especially from Iran and its proxies, but that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” in the war nearly entering its second year.
She also said she supported a two-state solution and the Palestinians’ need for self-determination.
The EU and its foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, have been increasingly vocal in their criticism of Israel over the way in which it’s conducting its campaign in Gaza.
Higher taxes for ‘Made in China’ products?
Harris and Trump expectedly argued over Washington’s policy on Beijing — namely, the former president’s idea of imposing duties of between 10% and 20% on all imports from China.
“My opponent has a plan that I call the ‘Trump sales tax’, which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month,” she said.
Trump said that his proposal of extra duties of between 60% and 100% would be a way of making Beijing and others “pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world, and the tariff will be substantial”.
He also questioned Harris about not getting rid of his tariffs, which Trump first imposed during his 2017-2021 term in office.
“If she doesn’t like them, they should have gone out, and they should have immediately cut the tariffs,” he said. “They never took the tariff off because it was so much money. They can’t, it would totally destroy everything that they’ve set out to do.”
In response, Harris accused Trump of not being as nearly as tough on China as he believes he was, “inviting trade wars” and causing a deficit during his time in office, inadvertently helping Beijing reach its own goals instead.
“Under Donald Trump’s presidency, he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernise their military,” she said.
“Trump basically sold us out when a policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century,” Harris explained.
In May, the Biden administration raised taxes against Chinese goods worth around €16 billion, including semiconductors and electric vehicles — a key policy for Brussels, which also introduced extra tariffs on Chinese-made EVs to protect the common market.
Trump accuses immigrants of ‘eating the dogs’
Throughout his campaign, Trump has leaned on illegal immigration, criticising rising numbers of illegal border crossings and the arrivals of thousands of people needing shelter in Democratic-led cities.
He accused Democrats of abetting large numbers of unauthorised crossings, though they have dropped in recent months in part due to new asylum restrictions by the Biden administration.
But as he often does in his rallies and on his social media account, Trump reeled off a series of falsehoods or unproven claims about migrants.
One of those claims was a debunked rumour that Trump and his allies have spread online in recent days, alleging Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town are hunting and eating pets.
“They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. This is a shame,” he said.
Officials in Springfield, Ohio, say they have no evidence of that happening.
Immigration has been one of Europe’s hot topics, further exacerbated by Germany’s decision to temporarily reintroduce land border checks on Tuesday to curb illegal migration — a move its neighbours believe is contrary to EU and Schengen principles.
Harris: Trump is using race to divide people
Trump has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes and falsely claiming that Harris, who attended a historically black university, hid her race during her career.
“I read where she was not black,” Trump said when asked about comments questioning Harris’ race, adding a minute later, “and then I read that she was black”. He seemed to suggest her race was a choice, saying twice, “That’s up to her”.
Harris did not remain silent, saying, “I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people.”
Harris, however, used it to present a long list of Trump’s racial controversies: his legal settlement for discrimination against prospective black tenants at his New York apartment buildings in the 1970s; his ad calling for the execution of black and Latino teenagers, who were wrongly arrested in the Central Park jogger assault case in the 1980s; and his false claims that former President Barack Obama was not born in the US.
“I think the American people want something better than that, want better than this,” Harris said.
Europe has experienced a rise in populism and far-right rhetoric in recent years, with growing support in many parts of the continent clearly seen during the European elections in June.
