WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) joined the German Marhsall Fund’s Fourth Annual Philon Lecture series to discuss the future of transatlantic cooperation and the importance of strong U.S.-European alliances.
Senator Gallego is an alum of the Grand Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network.
Watch the full conversation HERE.
On Trump and evolving U.S. alliances
Senator Gallego criticized former President Trump’s foreign policy, warning that it damaged long-standing international norms and institutions.
“They’re actively eroding the infrastructure we’ve evolved and relied on for many years that would supersede administrations – that’s things like USAID professionals, the State Department, treaties, and obligations,” said Senator Gallego. “It has been a huge whiplash for a lot of us that have a particular interest in foreign policy, because we believe foreign good foreign policy means we have good domestic policy, good national security.”
Later in the conversation, he emphasized the enduring transatlantic alliances despite shifting political leadership.
“I’m here for six years. The president is out in four years […] our relationship is going to supersede this president, and that’s been true for other administrations. I have not been happy, with some past prime ministers and presidents of Europe, but I’ve never let that kind of deteriorate my relationship with that country.”
On China and trade
Senator Gallego emphasized the need for coordinated economic policy with allies when confronting China. Speaking on Trump’s erratic trade war with China, he said:
“There is no way on God’s green earth we should have started an economic war – if you want to call it that – without us having the second largest world economy next to us, financially speaking.” said Senator Gallego. “If we really wanted to do this an effective way that I think would have made all of us stronger, we should have been coordinating with our European partners, Canadian partners, Mexico too, to make sure that we come up with a deal that takes care of all of us and the same time, moves our aims forward of either decoupling from China and or making China be a little more aligned with some of the standards that we’ve all set.”
He also noted the effects of Trump’s trade war on American working families, consumers, and businesses.
“I’m buying cribs, strollers, and the baby tax is real. Whether we like it or not, 97% of all those strollers that are sold in the United States are made in China. I don’t understand what [Trump] thought the deal was because the consumer is still going to pay that tax.”
On the Democratic party’s weakness on securing the border
Speaking on a path forward for Democrats on immigration, Gallego said:
“If we want to hold power, part of our coalition can’t be also saying that we’re going to allow this much irregular immigration. It just doesn’t work.”
“The United States messed up. There should not have been close to 6 million asylum seekers coming to the border in three years. As an Arizonan, I saw, and there was no exaggeration, it was as bad as it looked. […] Instead of us coming up with a solution, because we’re afraid of getting people mad within our political circles, we did nothing.”
“So we’re losing on the environmental agenda, we’re losing on the international policy agenda, losing on the labor agenda. We’re losing on all these things because of the one thing we could have done is moderate ourselves when it comes to border crossings, but we don’t, because we’re afraid of, as we say in Arizona, pissing people off.”
5/14/25