Professor Erik Jones, Director of the Robert Schuman Centre, talks about the main issues around the US presidential election, sharing personal impressions and relevant research findings.

We are all following the news on the US presidential contest daily. What are the highlights of the political debate from your point of view as an expert in International Political Economy?

US political debates tend to fall outside the academic sub-discipline of international political economy. The big issues are primarily domestic, including Donald Trump’s promise to levy across-the-board tariffs. The debate is not about whether the policy is protectionist or how it might distort the global economy, but whether these tariffs would tax consumers. This is not surprising. International relations rarely feature in domestic political debates, and economic policy is often too subtle to make good political arguments. When combined, international relations and economy policy – which is a big chunk of what academic study as ‘international political economy’ – tend to fall out of the public conversation.

Other important topics are missing from the debate. Neither candidate spends much time discussing climate change or multilateral cooperation needed for effective climate action. They also avoid focusing on international development. If anything, they want to hide those issues or at least the dimensions most clearly associated with the international political economy. Donald Trump criticises Kamala Harris for failing as the ‘border czar’ tackling the immigration problem; Harris rarely pushes back by to explain her role in promoting conditions in Central and South America to reduce immigration incentives. She is not avoiding responsibility for that portfolio. Her team recognises that to move the needle, she should go to the border to announce tougher border policies. Again, the focus is domestic.

Though we have seen the deterioration of the transatlantic relationship after Trump entered the presidential office in 2016, in one of your publications, you mention that “the Trump administration is more a symptom than a cause of the changes taking place”. How do you see the transatlantic relationship evolving after the 2024 vote?

The transatlantic relationship, like any other, has its ups and downs and evolves over time. Clearly, this election will impact perceptions across the Atlantic. Europeans will celebrate if Harris wins and try to adjust if she does not. That result may be only temporary. We saw how quickly Europeans fell into and out of love with Barack Obama and how they managed when Trump was first elected. But that is typical of ups and downs. The bigger question is the long-term trajectory, and unfortunately for fans of the transatlantic partnership, the trend lines are heading in the wrong direction. Veronica Anghel and I explored this in a recent article for Political Science Quarterly, showing how both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly focused on domestic challenges and less invested in their partnership. This remains true despite the solidarity sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While everyone recognised the importance of NATO and transatlantic cooperation, that recognition does not guarantee policies that will strengthen the bond. Who wins in November matters, but what is more important is whether Europeans and Americans make a conscious choice to work together to tackle shared challenges.

At the beginning of this presidential campaign, you spent some time in the US. What were some impressions you had from people and colleagues you talked to?

Your question made me smile because it suggests presidential campaigns have a clear beginning. This one feels endless—we even had to replace a candidate! That sense of time is important to understand how Americans feel about the contest. For a long time, the major feeling was exhaustion. Die-hard fans showed enthusiasm, but most of the country tried to focus on something different. Europeans, used to short election cycles, might find this strange. Think of French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve parliament after the European elections—you would be hard-pressed to remember the campaign. In contrast, Americans are trapped in a super marathon, grinding along until the end is in sight, which explains ‘undecided voters’. They know the candidates and which issues are important to them — health care, cost of living, education, and the changing nature of American society. They just fail to see how this long, grinding electoral process is going to generate a meaningful solution. This is why Kamala Harris sparked such enthusiasm—she was new and different, alongside Tim Walz as her running mate. Together, they created new contrasts with Trump and J.D. Vance. The challenge now for both sides is proving they can solve these big, recognisable problems in ways that positively impact lives.

As Director of the Schuman Centre, what are some key issues in research related to the US elections that we should hear about?

Virtually all the research we do at the Robert Schuman Centre is relevant to these elections. While not all of it will enter the popular debate, it will impact policy and, in turn, politics. Our latest ‘Research Agenda’ highlights this. The work we do on international conflict, climate change, democracy, migration, citizenship, decision-making, globalisation, technological innovation, macroeconomics, and finance sheds light on how societies function and how we can make the world a better place. This applies across disciplines, from the insights of history to the important choices explored in the study of law.

Our biggest challenge is communicating this research to a broader audience—showing its value and helping politicians, voters, officials, businesses, and households build on it. This is as true for the United States as it is for Europe, and as important globally as for the transatlantic partnership. This assertion is not meant as exaggeration or hyperbole. We are hardly the only outfit that works on these topics. My point is simply that the Robert Schuman Centre was created to do research that can feed into the kind of wider debates we see taking place in the context of the US elections and elsewhere.

Erik Jones is Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.He is editor or co-editor of books and special issues of journals on topics related to European politics and political economy. His commentary has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, and other major newspapers and magazines across Europe and North America. Professor Jones is author of The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union (2002), Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in Small States (2008), Weary Policeman: American Power in an Age of Austerity (2012, with Dana H. Allin), and The Year the European Crisis Ended (2014).