What if the US Abandoned the EU?
Oct 20, 2026 Trump says US could 'leave' Europe—but won't say what that means. A vague but pointed threat from the president lands amid French riots and an unpopular Iran war, and it collides with legal limits on any actual NATO exit. Trump's latest pronouncement about the US leaving Europe raises a counterfactual question I can answer with different versions of the EUL20 Model (see below). The graphic above compares time plots of the EUL20 US-input , BAU ( Business-as-Usual ) and RW ( Random Walk ) models. The results indicate that, historically, a US-Exit would have lost a lot of growth. However, the US-input has been cyclical and is forecast to start dropping around 2030. After 2045, US-input is no better than BAU (no input). And, after 2050, US-input creates collapse in the EUL20 Model . In other words, US-input might look necessary right now and US-Exit might appear catastrophic, but in the l...