This story is part of a selection of our top news from 2025 that we’re republishing during the holiday break. We’ll be back to our regular schedule in the new year.

Previously posted: August 4, 2025

“Delusional”, “ridiculous”, and “pie in the sky” were the adjectives coming from analysts after Donald Trump put fossil fuel exports at the centre of a framework trade agreement with the European Union.

The U.S.-EU deal was one of the cornerstones of Trump’s bid to win the global tariff war he has instigated—a battle he may already be losing.

At the heart of the deal is a requirement for the EU to buy US$250 billion per year of U.S. oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and nuclear technologies over the next three years, all in a bid to hold Trump tariffs on EU exports to the U.S. at 15%. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen joined Trump at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland to announce the agreement, Reuters reports.

European climate activists reacted immediately, warning that the deal would lock in massive fossil fuel purchases, Clean Energy Wire writes. Sascha Müller-Kraenner, managing director of Environmental Action Germany, said that would send a “disastrous signal for climate action”, with language that “not only sets the EU back in terms of climate policy, but also deepens its dependence on a U.S. president who uses energy supplies as a means of geopolitical pressure.”

But Bundestag member Nina Scheer, energy policy spokesperson for Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), said a deal at the EU level could not force any member state to buy or consume more fossil fuels, especially if it ran counter to that country’s energy and climate policy, Clean Energy Wire says. “Under EU law, the energy mix is purely a matter for the member states,” she explained.

While fossil producers maintained the deal would still boost their sales, analysts had their doubts. Matt Smith. lead oil analyst, Americas at global trade intelligence consultancy Kpler, said Trump’s “pie in the sky” numbers would be impossible to meet.

“Even if Europe did want to increase its imports, I don’t know the mechanism by which the EU goes to these companies and tells them to buy more U.S. energy,” Smith told The Financial Times. “Companies are beholden to their shareholders and have a duty to buy the cheapest feedstock.”

The New York Times notes that the deal “could have far-reaching effects on Europe’s economy and politics,” even if the $750-billion promise is only partly fulfilled. But Chris Aylett, a research fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank, said the scale of the demand is “so far away from what is really possible that it has the hallmarks of something said just to get an agreement over the line.”

‘Delusional Level of Imports’

Clyde Russell, Asia commodities and energy columnist for the Reuters news agency, says the deal carries “strong echoes” of a failed trade agreement with China that Trump tried to negotiate during his first term of office.

“This is a delusional level of imports that the EU has virtually no chance of meeting, and one that U.S. producers would also struggle to supply,” representing nearly four times the annual volume of oil, LNG, and coal the U.S. shipped to Europe in 2024, Russell writes. “Even if the EU did manage somehow to boost its energy imports from the United States to the $250 billion a year mark, it would also prove massively disruptive for energy flows around the rest of the world.”

Last time around, when Trump tried to strong-arm China into increasing its energy purchases by $200 billion over two years, “the reality is that China never even came close to buying that level, and its imports of U.S. energy didn’t even reach what they were before Trump launched his first trade war in 2017,” Russell recalls. This time, “the smart people in the room must know this, begging the question as to why agree to what is obviously a ridiculous number?”

Perhaps, he speculates, “the EU is hoping for the same outcome as China did with the first trade war with Trump in 2019. Run down the clock, talk nice, and hope the next U.S. president is easier to deal with.”

Energy Security Risk for Europe

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) agrees that a tripling of EU gas imports from the U.S. is unrealistic when European gas demand is in permanent decline, whereas $750 billion invested in renewable energy would be enough to increase the continent’s wind and solar capacity by about 90%. The U.S.-EU deal could also risk Europe’s energy security by making it too dependent on a single supplier—just as it was when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

“To meet the commitment,” IEEFA writes, “the EU would need to source about 70% of its energy imports from the country. The deal effectively ties the bloc’s energy supply to a single seller.” Nor is it clear how that sales volume would shift gas prices, affect contracts already signed elsewhere, or run afoul of supply and demand restrictions.

Meanwhile, “as European gas demand continues to decline to 2030 and beyond, LNG sellers will struggle to find buyers in the continent. How much more LNG can the EU buy from the U.S. when a global LNG supply glut is expected by 2030?” the institute adds. But “incentivizing LNG imports could lock in dependency on fossil gas—which could lead the EU to miss its 2040 target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by 90%, compared to 1990—and lead to financial risk related to compliance with the EU Methane Regulation.”

Instead, writes Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, lead energy analyst for IEEFA’s Europe team, the EU could double down on renewable energy deployments that have already helped reduce its gas demand by 20% over the last three years.

With a US$750 billion investment in renewables, the EU could install 321 gigawatts of utility-scale solar and 225 GW of onshore and offshore wind, amounting to a 90% boost in its capacity as of 2024, Jaller-Makarewicz writes.

“Scaling up renewables deployment provides energy security and brings down electricity prices,” she says. “Instead, the EU’s plan to increase its reliance on one energy supplier is a déjà vu moment for a continent still recovering from an energy crisis.”

Trump Is Losing

The gaps and uncertainties in the U.S.-EU energy deal coincide with mounting speculation that Trump is losing his trade war—and Americans may soon begin to lose patience.

Even in the first weeks of his term, oil companies and investors were talking down Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” agenda for fossil fuels. Scarcely half a year later, that skepticism is spreading to his global trade war.

“Coverage of his trade talks has so far been conducted as if they were pugilistic battles, with journalists trying to determine who ‘won’ each fight,” writes Globe and Mail contributing columnist John Rapley. “It’s a funny way to assess damage, though. The more pertinent question is: Is the trade war restoring the health of the U.S. economy and bringing manufacturing jobs back home, as Mr. Trump said it would do?”

By multiple economic measures, Rapley concludes, “the answer is no.” His column lays out the details: economic growth is slowing, investment is down, and “perhaps worst of all, exports actually weakened, suggesting that the response of trading partners faced with U.S. barriers is to look elsewhere for business.”

The Associated Press adds that, in Trump’s “remodelled” economy, job creation is slowing down while inflation is ticking upwards.

“He’s eager to take credit for any wins that might occur and is hunting for someone else to blame if the financial situation starts to totter,” the news agency writes. “But as of now, this is not the boom the Republican president promised, and his ability to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any economic challenges has faded as the world economy hangs on his every word and social media post.”

Trump’s own reaction last week raised investors’ anxiety, the Washington Post says, after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a discouraging jobs report. The former reality TV star and world-class golf cheater responded by firing the non-partisan head of the agency.

That move was “straight out of an autocratic playbook,” said Heidi Shierholz, the U.S. Labor Department’s former chief economist, who now heads the non-profit Economic Policy Institute.

“If policy-makers and the public can’t trust the data—or suspect the data are being manipulated—confidence collapses and reasonable economic decision-making becomes impossible,” she told the Post. “It’s like trying to drive a car blindfolded.”