Trump to Germany: I’m coming for your jobs

HOWDY. A day after Frans Timmermans took a veiled swipe at Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, outgoing EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager followed with her own plausibly deniable swing at her soon-to-be-ex-boss. Asked in Washington about von der Leyen’s plan to split up the competition and tech portfolios, Vestager said she has “no comments on how our president organizes work. It’s her privilege to do that. And it is, for obvious reasons, absolutely brilliant.”
The absolutely brilliant (in all sincerity) Eddy Wax will see you through the rest of the week.
TRUMP IS COMING FOR YOUR JOBS: “You will see a mass exodus of manufacturing from China to Pennsylvania, from Korea to North Carolina, from Germany to right here in Georgia,” former U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday.
Zero-sum vision: Debuting his plan for “relocating entire industries” to the U.S., Trump promised a 15 percent “Made in America tax rate” and said he would appoint a manufacturing envoy whose “sole task … will be to go around the world and convince major manufacturers to pack up and move back to America.” Autoworkers, he said, would get special attention. (As if Germany’s embattled car industry didn’t have enough to worry about — more on that below.)
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Campaign promise, empty threat? Economists have been largely skeptical of Trump’s aggressive tariff policies, contending that they will likely be reflected in higher market prices and ultimately absorbed by American consumers. Read more from our Stateside colleagues.
EUROPEAN PLEA TO AMERICAN VOTERS: London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has never been afraid to clash publicly with Trump, reignited their feud and urged Americans to vote for Kamala Harris as he spoke to POLITICO on Tuesday. “What happens in America is the metronome … that sets the beat of what happens across the globe,” Khan said in New York, where he’s attending the U.N. General Assembly. “It sets the beat for how other politicians behave in an election campaign.” Make sure you’re subscribed to Global Playbook for more updates from UNGA this week.
RESETTING THE BORDER VALVES: There are signs that EU capitals want to make some external borders more fluid — while finding more lasting ways to restrict Schengen movement.
Proposed EUCO agenda: EU ambassadors will meet in Coreper II next week to hash out the agenda for the next European Council summit, slated for October — and migration looks likely to be added to the discussion. Germany, which has angered many of its neighbors by implementing land border checks, wants a serious debate — and the new, right-leaning government in Paris looks likely to be a stronger ally.
France’s Mr. Whatever It Takes follows Berlin’s lead: Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau told news channel TF1 earlier this week that the new French government wants to reduce immigration in France “by any means.” Asked if Paris wants to follow Berlin and implement new border checks, Retailleau said: “We’ll see how far we can go.” Any debate around changing Schengen rules — which allow some border checks, but only temporarily — is likely to be explosive.
Franco-German letter seeks U.K. deal: The European Commission acknowledged on Tuesday that it received a letter from France and Germany looking to ink a deal on the flow of people to and from Britain. Paris and Berlin want Brussels to open negotiations on asylum and migration between the EU and the U.K., according to AFP, arguing that a third of illegal entries into the Schengen zone are people trying to get to Britain. The letter, signed by ex-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Germany’s current Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, argues that the lack of an agreement with the U.K. “feeds people-smuggling networks.”
Starmer reset: The letter posits that the arrival of Keir Starmer’s Labour government in the U.K. is “conducive to concrete progress on this issue,” notes the Times.
G7 next week: Starmer, of course, has been looking to Italy for insight on curbing immigration. Retailleau and Faeser will have a chance to discuss all this with British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper at a meeting of G7 interior ministers starting Oct. 2.
SCOOP — US WARNED ISRAEL AGAINST HEZBOLLAH STRIKES: Israel ramped up its military campaign in Lebanon despite an appeal by Biden administration officials who insisted it would likely hasten a wider regional conflict and that a diplomatic agreement with Hezbollah was still possible, according to my colleague Erin Banco in Washington.
Israeli officials disagreed and told their American counterparts it was time to “escalate to de-escalate” — that Hezbollah needed to be hit hard enough that it would feel compelled to participate in talks to end the conflict. It’s the starkest disagreement between the allies since the conflict began on how to handle the militant group. Read Erin’s full piece here.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is running out of patience. At the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, leaders from various countries expressed frustration at the inability of the parties involved in the conflict in the Middle East to reach a cease-fire, and at the helplessness of institutions such as the U.N. to bring about peace. Virtually all the world leaders who took the lectern called for an end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as on the increasingly violent Israel-Lebanon front, Mona Zhang and Nahal Toosi report.
The rhetoric was especially intense when directed at Benjamin Netanyahu, with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan comparing the Israeli PM to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
HEZBOLLAH CONFIRMS COMMANDER DEATH: Hezbollah confirmed an Israeli strike on south Beirut killed Ibrahim Kobeissi, who Israel said was one of the Iran-backed group’s top commanders.
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EUROPE AS “BARBIELAND”: Rather than a crass, plastic parody of American commercialism, Barbie’s fantasy world represents the pro-EU establishment’s oblivious assumption that everyone thinks the bloc is a source of opportunity and empowerment. According to a provocative report out this morning, from the European Council on Foreign Relations, the wars and elections of the past year have been the equivalent of Barbie’s rude awakening that real-world girls don’t like her so much. Without changes, warns the 2024 edition of the European Sentiment Compass, the risk is not so much that Europe will disintegrate, but that its values will become unrecognizable.
“Blind spots”: Essentially a meta-analysis based on survey data and the pooled wisdom of social scientists and pollsters around the EU27, the report zooms in on three groups who have under-participated in the European public sphere: non-white and Muslim Europeans; young adults; and Central and Eastern Europeans. 
Here are Playbook’s top takeaways …
— #BrusselsSoWhite(r): No more than 20 MEPs from racial and ethnic minorities were elected in 2024 — that’s less than 3 percent of the plenary. And the 6 million Roma people, Europe’s single largest ethnic minority, aren’t represented at all.
— Don’t knock Fidias, or “intergenerational fairness”: Gen Z and younger voters turned out at low rates in June’s European Parliament election. In Cyprus, YouTube prankster Fidias Panayiotou (a figure who has hardly endeared himself to the Brussels old guard) captured their attention and votes — as did candidates on the extreme right and left. So the appointment of a (youthful) commissioner for intergenerational fairness, the report argues, is a “promising step” toward showing the EU isn’t just for Boomers, by Boomers. 
— Central and Eastern swagger is driving migration politics: The EU’s newer members have gotten over their inferiority complex relative to Western Europe, the report asserts, fueled by vindication of their warnings about Vladimir Putin’s intentions. At the same time, “xenophobic language and policy” has extended from the region’s Euroskeptic pols to the mainstream, and the east appears to be driving the west’s migration policy.
—  Europhilia and xenophobia: Not mutually exclusive. Despite the above trends, pro-EU sentiment is generally stable. So the report anticipates another scenario: European sentiment remaining strong but being increasingly rooted in a xenophobic, ethnic, closed-minded understanding of Europeanness. The EU “would still be running” it concludes, “but on a dirty fuel.”
Behind the title: “Welcome to Barbieland: European sentiment in the year of wars and elections” was dreamed up by its author Pawel Zerka during a transatlantic flight, “having initially listened at length to Brazilians’ complaints about Europe and then finally watching ‘Barbie,’” he wrote in Common Ground magazine. “These are probably the only and necessary preconditions for one to even consider a major analogy between the perfect doll and the old continent. But isn’t there one?”
BERLIN HOPES FOR LAST-MINUTE DEAL ON CHINA CAR DUTIES: Brussels and Beijing are engaged in intense 11th-hour negotiations on unfair subsidies for electric vehicles from China, raising hopes in Berlin that EU duties on these cars and a trade war with China can still be avoided.
Minimum prices: Two people briefed on the discussions told Berlin Playbook’s Hans von der Burchard that Chinese negotiators stayed in Brussels following a meeting between Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis last week. They’re seeking to reach a deal with the EU that would set minimum prices on Chinese electric cars. Berlin Playbook has more.
EUROPE’S FINANCIAL AMBITIONS SLAM INTO GERMAN OPPOSITION: A big move by Italy’s UniCredit to buy Germany’s Commerzbank sounds like exactly the sort of tie-up Europe’s leaders have spent years crying out for, so the bloc can compete with rivals from the U.S. and Asia. But hopes of deeper EU integration appear likely to once again be thwarted by Berlin’s domestic interests.
“Unfriendly attack”: That was how German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described UniCredit’s move, reflecting Berlin’s fears that a takeover by the Italians could sap lending to Germany’s prized Mittelstand, the small and medium-sized manufacturers that are viewed as the backbone of the economy. Scholz’s hostility is infuriating politicians and economists from other EU countries who have long accused Germany of prioritizing its interests to the detriment of the European single market. My colleagues in POLITICO’s Pro Financial Services team have more.
SOMETHING ITALY AND GERMANY AGREE ON: The combustion engine ban threatens to bring about a “grave crisis” for Europe, warned Italy’s Industry Minister Adolfo Urso, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party. “The road map of the Green Deal, as it was designed, has already demonstrated its contradictions with the collapse of the European electric vehicle market and the grave crisis of European carmakers,” Urso told the FT. “It’s already clear the road map … is not sustainable.”
GRIM PROSPECTS FOR BALKAN THAW: In a chat with Playbook’s Nick Vinocur, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti blamed Serbia for the lack of progress in EU-brokered normalization talks between the two countries, accusing its President Aleksandar Vučić of harboring the leader of an armed incursion into Kosovo and failing to implement a peace deal.
Where’s the signature? “The approach of Belgrade is not normalizing relations with Kosovo,” said Kurti, a day after he participated in a Brussels lunch organized by the European Commission alongside his Serbian counterpart. “How come they said yes to the [Ohrid] Agreement but refused to sign it?”
Bone of contention: Kurti was referring to the 2023 agreement meant to normalize relations between the two nations. While Serbia has yet to sign it, Belgrade accuses Pristina of riding roughshod over the rights of Serbs in northern Kosovo. In a recent interview with POLITICO, Vučić called for a do-over of municipal elections in the Kosovar region, which had been boycotted by local Serbs.
Not on speaking terms: Despite sharing the same table in Brussels last week, the two Balkan leaders didn’t speak directly and have continued to trade barbs. After Vučić said he had “no relationship” with Kurti, the Kosovo leader hit back: “When he speaks, I don’t intervene. Whenever I speak, he complains.”
Fugitive factor: Kurti accused the Serbian government of violating their agreement “time and again” and of harboring Milan Radoičić, a Serbian man who claimed he’d led an armed incursion into Kosovo. Radoičić “is free and at large in Serbia protected and financed by Serbia,” said Kurti.
What EU doing? Kurti also pointed the finger at top EU diplomat Josep Borrell and the bloc’s special representative to the Western Balkans, Miroslav Lajčák. “The problem is that Mr. Borrell and Lajčák did not blow the whistle when there was a violation. Imagine a referee going around on a football pitch without the whistle.”
Contacted by Playbook for comment, the office of Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Đurić sent an eight-page document that mainly accuses Pristina of failing to set up Serb-majority municipalities in the country’s north. “Kosovo is using [the] argument, ‘we firstly need signatures’ just to play the blame game with Belgrade,” it said. “Yet Kosovo continues to ignore all of its Dialogue obligations.”
Bottom line: Things aren’t getting any better between Pristina and Belgrade, which won’t help either country on their paths to EU membership — just as the Commission is preparing to unveil a series of detailed reports on candidate countries’ prospects.
“Is the EU shifting gears on large carnivore coexistence?” the European Environmental Bureau network of climate NGOs asked, in its campaign against a Commission proposal to limit the protection status of wolves.
Maybe. Poland at least, is shifting gears against medium herbivore coexistence, as Donald Tusk declares war on beavers.
FLIPPING THE PICTURE: For decades, the European Union loved to regulate. Now, it wants to do the opposite. At top levels of the EU, there’s recognition that being a first-mover regulator doesn’t necessarily translate into being a good one. As the focus shifts to economic prowess over regulatory swiftness, there will soon be a European commissioner for slashing red tape.
And new realities: It’s not just the economics. Rather than forcing the rest of the world to comply with the EU’s rules, the “Brussels effect” has more recently had the effect of driving Big Tech companies to skip the EU when it comes to launching products and AI features. Read the article.
NEW COMMISSIONER SERIES: Kathryn Carlson and Aitor Hernández-Morales have this profile of Maria Luís Albuquerque, who has been selected to oversee financial services in the new European Commission — and has a mixed reputation at home.
UKRAINE BETS ON INDIA: Volodymyr Zelenskyy has turned to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a middleman to help end the war, my colleague Seb Starcevic reports. The two leaders and their entourages met on Monday evening in New York, where they discussed the pathway to a peace deal.
Speaking of India: Graham Lanktree, Camille Gijs and Doug Palmer profile the world’s toughest trade negotiator: India’s Piyush Goyal.
CZECH WOBBLES: The Czech government in disarray after poor regional election results, reports Ketrin Jochecová.
DOWNFALL OF THE LIBERAL BROS: Victor Goury-Laffont and Kyle Duggan have a piece out this morning previewing French President Emmanuel Macron’s two-day visit to Canada, where he’ll be hosted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Once seen as emblematic of a new generation of liberals, both politicians have seen their legacies bruised after years in power, with right-wing movements posing a growing threat to their leadership.
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— EU ambassadors meet in Coreper II at 9.30 a.m. Agenda. Deputy ambassadors meet in Coreper I at 10 a.m. Agenda.
— Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is in New York, where she rings the bell to open the day’s trading at the New York Stock Exchange.
— Council President Charles Michel is also in New York, giving a speech at the U.N. Security Council debate on “Leadership for Peace.”
— NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in New York takes part in a commemorative event on the 20th anniversary of the NATO-Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, hosted by Kuwait.
— EU High Representative Josep Borrell in New York participates in the G20 foreign affairs ministers meeting at 5 p.m. Watch. He co-hosts a ministerial meeting on Sudan and hosts a meeting with the Western Balkans leaders.
— Climate Action Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra delivers a statement on behalf of the EU at a UNGA high-level meeting to address existential threats posed by sea-level rise. He will meet with Tore Onshuus Sandvik, Norway’s climate minister, and Ed Miliband, the U.K.’s energy secretary.
— Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders participates via videoconference in the launch of the European Judicial Organized Crime Network of Eurojust.
— Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas is in Madrid, Spain, where he delivers introductory remarks at the conference “The European Union, a necessary condition,” organized by Fundación Carlos de Amberes.
— Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager is in Montreal, Canada, where she meets with François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s federal innovation minister.
— France’s President Emmanuel Macron is also in Canada.
— Parliament President Roberta Metsola attends the EPP group study days in Naples, Italy; participates in a panel discussion on “Europe’s southern border: The importance of the Mediterranean region” at 11:15 a.m.
— Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli delivers a keynote speech for the Foundation for European Progressive Studies at the conference “Call to Europe: The future is social” and meets with LGBTQ+ activists to discuss the situation in Bulgaria.
— Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson participates in the Norway-Canada ministerial consultation meeting on the Plastic Pollution Treaty and meets Omar Paganini, Uruguay’s minister of foreign affairs.
— The Governing Council of the ECB holds a virtual non-monetary policy meeting.
— European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly holds a farewell reception at 6:30 p.m. Commission Executive Vice President Maroš Šefčovič and German MEP Katarina Barley will speak.
WEATHER: High of 16C, rain.
“DRAINPIPE OF SHAME,” REVISITED: EUObserver’s Andrew Rettman returns to the drainpipe that then-Fidesz MEP József Szájer used to escape a banned Covid-era orgy when it was raided by the cops, which has become a Brussels tourist attraction.
AMAZON WEEK: The Brazilian mission to the EU and its embassies to Belgium and Luxembourg are gathering experts to explore how science, tech and sustainable finance can drive the bioeconomy in the Amazon region. There will also be photo exhibitions, documentary screenings and academic debates starting today. Agenda here.
GET ON BOARD: Bookings are now open for European Sleeper’s new night train from Brussels to Innsbruck and Venice, which starts operating in February. Here’s a breakdown of costs and other travel tips. 
FOR GOURMANDS: The Eat Festival returns to Brussels with the latest culinary trends, featuring exclusive multiple-course menus crafted by local chefs, patissiers and cheesemakers. Starts Thursday. Tickets here.
CONCERT: The London-based rock duo O. — yes, that’s the name of the band — are finishing their Europe tour today at the Witloof Bar. The show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets available here.
BIRTHDAYS: MEP Pascal Arimont; former MEP (and grandson of the president) Charles de Gaulle; former MEPs Maria João Rodrigues and Charles Tannock; Cappelli RCCD Studio Legale’s Martino Liva; TW Visual Storytelling Agency’s Jack Zahora; POLITICO’s Anam Anwar Khan. 
THANKS TO: Aoife White, Barbara Moens, Jacopo Barigazzi, Nick Vinocur, Elena Giordano, Hans von der Burchard, Doug Palmer and Eddy Wax; Playbook editor Alex Spence, reporter Šejla Ahmatović and producer Dean Southwell.
CORRECTION: This newsletter has been updated to correct the timing of the Coreper II meeting when ambassadors will discuss the European Council summit agenda.
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