The Real Reason Europe Is ‘Decaying’

European leaders ar furious at chairwoman ruff followers his recent derogatory comments about their Continent. This is becoming an instructive diplomatic fiasco, even if it’s one in which Dr. Trump botches his diagnosis of the Continent’s most serious problems.

The Administration’s National Security Strategy last week stirred outrage by warning that America’s European allies face “civilizational erasure.” Mr. Trump’s foreign-policy panjandrums mean primarily that mass immigration and deepening political illegitimacy are sapping Europe’s vim and vigor. Mr. Trump followed this week by describing Europe as “weak” and “decaying.”

The strategy, a brainchild of Vice President JD Vance and his circle, implies the U.S. May withdraw from its longstanding security cooperation with Europe if Washington decides Europe is no longer worth defending. A particular threat concerns the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The strategy paper warns that mass (read: Muslim) migration means some NATO members could within a few decades be majority non-European.

Messrs. Trump and Vance have a point. The European Union does too many things (foreign policy, environmental regulation and the like) badly that it shouldn’t do at all. What it’s supposed to do, such as creating a Continent-wide free-trade bloc, it does poorly.

European voters are angry about their leaders’ failures to get a grip on a migration crisis now entering its second decade. They’re frustrated with the increasing prosperity gap between Europe and the U.S., and with Europe’s frailty in the face of foreign challenges such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. Worst of all, they see that their leaders’ first instincts are to suppress contrary opinions, which is why free speech is again a hot debate in Europe.

Some of this bespeaks the lack of confidence in European civilization the Trump Administration observes. Much of this traces to a loss of belief in the superiority of Western values, including guilt over imperialism and destructive 20th-century wars.

But the Trump diagnosis ignores the biggest threat to Europe’s well-being. That is Europe’s generous social-welfare states and the cascading fiscal, economic and social ills they create.

Government social expenditure in the U.S. Accounted for 19.8% of GDP in 2024, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In France the figure was 30.6%, in Germany 27.9%, and in Italy 27.6%. This share will rise as populations age. These columns recently documented the severity of the old-age entitlement problem in France and Germany especially.

This fact explains much of what ails Europe. Large welfare states require large tax bills to fund them, which is why government revenue reaches 47% of GDP in France, 41% in Germany, and 43% in Italy but 27% in the U.S. That level of taxation saps incentives for innovation and entrepreneurship. Generous welfare states also discourage work, which partly explains why Europe’s labor markets are so sclerotic.

Meanwhile, European governments, taxed to the hilt and increasingly indebted, find it difficult to spend more on defense. Hence the Continent’s inability to shape events in Ukraine, embarrassing leaders and voters and deepening the sense of ennui caused by economic underperformance.

The question is why Messrs. Trump and Vance stress migration and culture more than these fiscal and economic facts. Perhaps because Mr. Trump doesn’t want to reform America’s own entitlement state. Mr. Vance often speaks as if he wants to expand the government’s role, as if welfare checks and bureaucracy can restore national elan and social unity.

Reforming welfare is politically difficult. It’s far easier to denounce migrants and European cultural decadence. Especially when the U.S. Is on a similar, if slower, path to welfare-state sclerosis.

Immigration is a manageable challenge, now that Europe is starting to grapple with it. Washington could also be a positive influence on Europe, as Reagan’s policy example was in the 1980s. Mr. Trump’s demand for more defense spending will require welfare reforms that would benefit everyone.

But an irony of the Trump-Vance rhetoric is that it could make most of Europe’s problems worse. The domestic political allies they want to cultivate in Europe, such as Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) or France’s National Rally, are big-state, anti-economic-reform parties, and often are instinctively anti-American to boot. This isn’t the way to make friends or spur a European revival.

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