When U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House, he had his sights set on rebalancing the transatlantic relationship. He would be right to do so. The United States’ burden in NATO is out of proportion with the interests at stake, and regulations set in Brussels have resulted in a lopsided U.S.-EU trade regime. Although it is one of 32 NATO members, the United States covers 16 percent of NATO’s annual budget and shoulders most of the operational and logistical burden for Europe’s security. Meanwhile, the EU has long used tariff and nontariff barriers to limit access for U.S. agricultural and industrial products and has obstructed the operation of American small business and Big Tech with rules and red tape.

Trump took aim at Europe as soon as he entered office. Shortly after his inauguration, he dispatched Vice President JD Vance and the freshly confirmed U.S. defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to warn Europeans that Washington’s “new sheriff” was intent on changing the terms of the relationship. In Paris, Vance called on Europe to lower regulation of artificial intelligence and energy. In Munich, he questioned Europe’s continued commitment to shared Western values. In Brussels, Hegseth announced that the United States could no longer focus primarily on Europe’s security and would be shifting to other priorities. Soon after, Trump levied punitive tariffs designed to pressure Europe to reduce trade barriers and regulations that limit the access of U.S. firms.

This multifront pressure campaign produced some initial results. At a NATO summit meeting in June, European allies promised to increase their defense spending to five percent of GDP by 2035. In July, Trump and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced a trade deal committing the EU to purchase $750 billion in American energy products and invest $600 billion in the U.S. market by 2028.

Yet these successes were at best partial, and perhaps illusory. The five percent pledge by European allies does almost nothing for the United States in the near term, and since today’s leaders cannot credibly bind the hands of future ones, it is an open question whether European countries will ever meet these spending targets. Moreover, the United States has retained control of key leadership positions in NATO, ensuring that Europe’s institutionalized military dependence will endure.

The trade deal with the EU, formalized as a framework agreement in August, could represent a more substantial adjustment. But for now, it remains an outline. Europe’s ability to meet its multiyear commitments is far from clear, and Brussels continues to resist revising regulations that inhibit the operation of American high-tech companies on the continent. The trade pact is also a one-off, unsupported by any institutional infrastructure. As a result, the impenetrability of EU bureaucracies will continue to limit the United States’ ability to restructure transatlantic economic relations.

If the Trump administration truly intends to rebalance the relationship with Europe—and to assign it a more proportionate place within American foreign policy—it cannot rely on narrow deals that merely tweak or seek to circumvent existing structures. Instead, it must tackle the basic premises of transatlanticism head on. To do so requires an understanding of the three fateful choices made at NATO’s founding: prioritizing Europe at the expense of the Americas, institutionalizing the military rather than the economic component of the transatlantic relationship, and embedding a regional alliance within a universalist ideological framework. Each decision came with immediately apparent downsides. All have resulted in mounting difficulties in recent years. Until the original premises of transatlantic policy are reconsidered, the relationship will continue to suffer from the same fundamental problems.

Fortunately, the Trump administration can take steps to address past mistakes and set the transatlantic relationship on a new course. First, Trump should follow through on his commitment to refocus U.S. foreign policy on America’s near abroad, pulling back from Europe and avoiding the hard “pivot to Asia” that previous administrations have pledged. Second, his national security team should insist that NATO confine its activities to the Euro-Atlantic region. Finally, the Trump administration should shift the transatlantic relationship from one based on military cooperation to one centered on economic engagement and technology. The continent would remain an important American partner, but it would no longer be a drain on American resources.

For the first century and a half of its history, the United States prioritized a hemispheric foreign policy. In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington warned Americans against entanglement with Europe. In his 1823 address to Congress, James Monroe warned Europeans against encroachment into the Western Hemisphere. U.S. efforts to institutionalize a pan-American policy reached their apogee in 1947 with the adoption of the Rio Pact—the first mutual security treaty to be joined by the United States—in which the region’s countries agreed to defend one another if attacked.

When the United States joined NATO in 1949,........

© Foreign Affairs