US Ambassador to EU Andrew Puzder Talks 'Made in Europe'

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bloomberg Talks

Episode: US Ambassador to EU Andrew Puzder Talks 'Made in Europe'

Date: February 20, 2026
Host: Bloomberg (Stephen, Stephanie Flanders)
Guest: Andrew Puzder, US Ambassador to the European Union

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Episode Overview

This episode features a timely and candid discussion with Andrew Puzder, the current US Ambassador to the EU. The conversation centers on the state of transatlantic relations following a year of political turbulence, focusing particularly on the US-EU trade deal, growing industrial policy frictions, and defense cooperation. Ambassador Puzder provides insider perspectives on the future of the framework trade agreement, the 'Made in Europe' initiative, and ongoing doubts about the reliability of the US as a European security partner.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Current State of Transatlantic Relations

• Context: The US-EU trade framework, agreed in the previous summer, is awaiting approval from the European Parliament.
• Backdrop: Uncertainty caused by President Trump’s remarks on Greenland and US military posture.
• Ambassador Puzder’s Take: The mood at diplomatic events is focused on trade, critical minerals, and regulatory reform—not Iran or military intervention.

  “You talk about the trade deal, you talk about critical minerals, you talk about regulatory reform, deregulation, but nobody really brought up Iran.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 02:31)

2. European Parliament’s Conditions on the Trade Deal

• New Conditions: Time limit (sunset clause) of 2028; possible suspension if the US raises tariffs.
• Process: These amendments are committee proposals, not yet ratified by the full Parliament (vote scheduled for March 9 in Strasbourg).
• US Response: Ambassador Puzder is cautious, declining to comment before final approval but making a point of attending the vote.

  “Just my being there will, I think, make a statement about how important the deal is to us.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 04:11)

• Sunset Clause Skepticism: Puzder expresses frustration about repeating lengthy approval processes.

  “I hate to think that in a couple of years we’re going to do all this again.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 04:28)

3. Tariffs & Trade Barriers (Steel, Aluminum, and Derivatives)

• Ongoing Frictions: Dispute over US tariffs on steel and aluminum and their derivatives.
• Potential Solutions: US officials are reportedly working on a fix, but EU’s own non-tariff measures such as the Carbon Border Adjustment could be seen as equally protectionist.

  “The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism...puts a tax on US products...the same things are covered by the derivative tax and by the carbon border adjustment mechanism.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 06:30)

4. ‘Made in Europe’ Industrial Preferences

• EU Debate: The European Commission is considering rules favoring EU-made products across industries, especially defense.
• US Concerns: Puzder argues these violate the intent and letter of the framework trade agreement and threaten deeply integrated transatlantic supply chains, notably in defense.

  “Made in Europe rules would be direct contravention of...the framework trade Agreement...I think adopting them would be a serious mistake, particularly in the area of defense.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 07:33)

• Defense Interoperability: A “Buy Europe” approach could disrupt shared defense manufacturing just as Europe is grappling with the war in Ukraine.
• Diplomatic Engagement: US is actively engaging the Commission, Council, and Parliament—including through co-authored op-eds by Puzder and US Ambassador to NATO, Matt Whitaker.

5. The Rearm Europe Program & Doubts Over US Commitment

• EU Goal: More than 50% of European weapons to be EU-made amid doubts about continued US reliability.
• Ambassador’s Rebuttal: Highlights deep US-EU industrial cooperation, sustained NATO commitments, and military presence.

  “We have more troops here in Europe than all of the European militaries added together...our nuclear umbrella that protects Europe, that’s not going anywhere.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 11:52)

6. French and European Nuclear Autonomy

• Macron's Proposal: Speculation about France providing a European nuclear umbrella.
• Puzder’s Response: Skeptical about France’s capacity to do so at scale.

  “He’d have to produce a whole lot more nuclear weapons than he has currently. And I don’t know that France is in a particularly advantageous economic position to do that.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 12:29)

7. Economic Growth and Regulation in Europe

• Growth Stagnation: Ambassador argues that excessive regulation stifles European innovation and competitiveness.

  “Europe talks about competitiveness. I wish they would stop talking about how they’re going to compete with other people and just talk about how they’re going to grow their economy.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 13:40)

• Reindustrialization: Calls for deregulation and true pro-growth policies rather than more complicated rules or protectionist industrial policies.

  “We need deregulation, not simplification...The problem is you just have too many regulations, period.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 14:26)

• European Leaders’ Agreement: Notes that leaders like Chancellor Merits and Prime Minister Dev have voiced similar concerns about over-regulation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Diplomatic Realities:
  “Nobody asked about Iran. That wasn’t a topic.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 02:31)

• On Industrial Policy and Defense:
  “A focus on having our defense products be interoperable...this by Europe preference...is a real threat to our defense industrial base. And that worries me a lot.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 08:32)

• Sharpest Rebuttal of EU Nuclear Autonomy:
  “He’d have to produce a whole lot more nuclear weapons than he has currently. And I don’t know that France is in a particularly advantageous economic position to do that at the moment.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 12:29)

• On European Economic Policy:
  “We need to see Europe participating in the AI economy. We need to see the kinds of growth...When it grows, it will be competitive.”
  (Andrew Puzder, 13:43)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Trade agreement progress & Parliament conditions: 01:07–05:27
• Tariffs and carbon border adjustment: 05:27–07:04
• ‘Made in Europe’ policy risks: 07:04–09:01
• Defense industry and US commitment: 10:57–12:24
• European nuclear autonomy debate: 12:24–12:40
• Economic growth, deregulation, and innovation: 12:44–15:39

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Overall Tone and Takeaways

Ambassador Puzder adopts a pragmatic and forthright tone, expressing both frustration and optimism. He emphasizes the importance of sustained negotiation, warns against protectionism, and urges European policymakers to focus on pro-growth policies over regulatory complexity. Throughout, Puzder positions the US as a committed security partner and a constructive critic of European economic strategy, challenging the EU to prioritize real economic growth and defense unity above short-term industrial wins.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking insight into the next phase of US-EU relations, particularly those watching the evolution of industrial policy, transatlantic defense, and economic competitiveness in a changing world.

Transcript

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[Andrew Puzder]

Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News well, let's turn back

[Interviewer]

to that interview now. After a tumultuous year for relations between the United States and Europe, are things starting to improve? The process to approve the framework trade agreement between the US And EU agreed last summer, is progressing through the European Parliament after being disrupted by President Trump's threats over Greenland. So what next for transatlantic ties? We're joined by Andrew Posner, now the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Good morning. Great to have you with us.

[Andrew Puzder]

Thanks, Stephen.

[Interviewer]

Great to be here in the studio. Before we get into the trade conversation, I just wanted to ask you about the story that is leading our agendas this morning about Iran and the potential for US Military intervention there. I'm wondering what sort of conversations you're having with your European colleagues about that issue this morning. Are they concerned about what happens next in Iran?

[Andrew Puzder]

Really everything I know about that issue I learned from Paul Wallace. As I was getting ready to do a TV interview on Bloomberg this morning. I you know, as president, President Trump wants to be the peace president and has been the peace president across the globe in a number of conflicts. But he's also willing to strike decisively if he feels America's interests or the interests of our allies are at risk. So I don't have any inside information and I really have not had conversations with any of the anybody. Nobody raises that. I was in an event last night to celebrate the birthday of the Japanese emperor. At the Japanese mission, we saw a number of perm reps and one of

[Interviewer]

your best parties, perhaps, given to what we were just talking about.

[Andrew Puzder]

Oh, it's a good one they have great food, I'll tell you that. It was great to see everybody, but nobody asked about Iran. That wasn't a topic. You talk about the trade deal, you talk about critical minerals, you talk about regulatory reform, deregulation, but nobody really brought up Iran.

[Stephanie Flanders]

Okay, so. Well, let's see what happens with the deadline that President Trump has given and what the reaction will be in terms of that trade deal. Let's talk about it. The European Parliament has added a number of conditions, including a time limit for the trade deal of 2028 and a suspension clause if the US imposes higher tariffs. Are you happy with those conditions?

[Andrew Puzder]

Well, the conditions came out of the committee. These, they were not, they have not been passed by Parliament yet that they they come before Parliament on March 9 when they're in plenary session in Strasbourg, which I intend to go to. I'm going to I think it's important for the United States to let people know we think this is a big issue. We'll be there. Then it will go. Since the council approved the trade deal as the commission signed it, you know, on the theory that a deal is a deal, there'll be a trilogue or in the United States, what we'd call reconciliation. But there'll be a trilogue here where the council and the parliament will discuss those amendments. And we'll have to see, we'll have to see what comes out. I'd hate to compliment or I'd hate to make comment about any of them prematurely, and they really haven't been voted on by Parliament yet. I think if you're going do you

[Interviewer]

plan to what do you plan to say to the members of the European Parliament at the plenary session?

[Andrew Puzder]

But I plan to be there in case they have questions about what the United States position is on any of this and how important the trade deal is to us. I think that, you know, just my being there will, I think, make a statement about how important the deal is to us. So I want to make that statement. There's also some I have friends in the Parliament now who I'd like to get together with to see how they're doing. And I have some individuals I'd like to meet with who I haven't met with yet in Parliament. So hopefully I'll do some of that. But on the sunset provision, you know, that one in particular seems a little strange to me. We just spent, Josh, so long trying to get the European Union to approve the last deal that they agreed to. When was it? In July, I think. Right. And the United States in August did everything we promised to do in the trade deal we executed. Now we've been waiting for nine months for Europe to do anything because it has to go through this process before it can act. And I hate to think that in a couple of years we're going to do all this again. Although President Trump might like it, he probably want to raise the tariffs once again. I don't know that he's, I don't know that he's a big fan of lowering them to 15%, but he might be. I shouldn't comment on that. I'm only being half serious. That's probably a mistake on the radio,

[Interviewer]

but one of the issues that the European Parliament committee took issue with was the higher tariffs that are on steel aluminum products as well. There's this question of a list of derivative products that use these metals as well, which has been a particular bone of contention for the eu. Are there changes afoot there? Is there hope for progress on those issues?

[Andrew Puzder]

Yeah, it is. The derivatives were a big issue even before anything arose about Greenland. So that was something that Bernd Longay, who chairs the committee that approved the amended the five amendments to the bill and the bill that's going before the Parliament on the 9th, he's always been concerned about that. And there's, I am told by people I know at the US Trade Representative's office and the Commerce Department that we have what we hope is a solution to some of those issues. We'll have to see whether it's in a solution that's acceptable to the EU. I would also mention though that the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is another non tariff trade barrier, and those are mentioned extensively in the, in the Framework Agreement, does basically the same thing. It puts a tax on US Products that have, you know, these, these elements as well. It's the washing machines, the motorcycles, the same things are covered by the derivative tax and by the carbon border adjustment mechanism. So hopefully we'll be able to resolve both of those issues. But let's get, let's get a vote out of Parliament, let's get a bill out of the trilog proceeding and then I think we can go from there.

[Stephanie Flanders]

In terms of the other major threads, there is this debate going on within the European Commission about the made in Europe plan, the rules on the preference of products made within the eu. You've talked about your concerns there already, but are you worried about that particular issue and whether it will have a big impact on US Companies if the European Commission focuses on made in Europe rules?

[Andrew Puzder]

Well, made in Europe rules would be direct contravention of the, not only the terms, but the spirit of the framework trade Agreement that was agreed to in Scotland because we've agreed not to have those kinds of preferences between our two countries. And I think adopting them would be a serious mistake, I would say, particularly in the area of defense, because we have a very intermixed defense industrial base between the United States and Europe. Many of the weapons, the armaments that we're using, not only in NATO but also shipping to Ukraine, have production capacities in Europe as well as the United States and the machines that make them. Some are made in the Czech Republic and Finland, some are made in the US There's a very intermixed supply chain, a defense industrial base, and a focus on having our defense products be interoperable. In other words, that if we are, if we're a NATO member and we're producing military hardware, we want to be, we want it, you know, we can't have it, you know, working for different sized train rails or weights that are, that, that don't work on European highways. We have to have these things interoperable. And these, this by Europe preference, particularly in these defense procurement initiatives, is, is a real threat to our defense industrial base. And that worries me a lot.

[Interviewer]

Are you engaging with the European Commission on this? Have you spoken to Commissioner Stefan Sojourne?

[Andrew Puzder]

Yes, and we're engaging with the parliament, we're engaging with members of council. Actually, Matt Whitaker, who's the U.S. ambassador to NATO, and I have an article coming out on this next week which will be in Politico, which is kind of a competitor to yours. But if you guys want to run our op eds, I'll talk to you afterwards.

[Interviewer]

But if you want to tell us what's in it would be useful for this because I think there's quite a lot of listening to you now. There'll be probably quite a lot of ambassadors and members of the European Commission would be quite concerned that perhaps this plan may upset the US Trade relationship. Is this an issue that you could see becoming much bigger?

[Andrew Puzder]

I think we'll negotiate through this because I just don't think it's a wise thing to do, particularly with respect to our defense industrial base, because the more you break that up, it may help the economy of certain countries, but that's really not the purpose of the defense industrial base. That's really not the purpose of these funding mechanisms. If you want to have a funding mechanism to build up Europe's production capacity, you know, have a loan program that does that if you're making a loan, if you're, if you have a loan program that is either designed to help Ukraine win the war in Ukraine to defeat the Russians, well then they ought to be able to buy whatever they want from wherever they want so that they can win the war. I mean they've been, nobody thought they would last two weeks. They said we're going into our fourth year and they're, you know, they've changed warfare. Literally. They've, you know, they took out 40% of the Russians, Baltic, whoever thought this would all happen. So they should be able to purchase what they want with respect to NATO. NATO member states should also be able to purchase what they want, what they need to meet their defense needs. So when the European Union comes up with these defence procurement initiatives, these funding mechanisms, these loan mechanisms to put in European preference language can be a very dangerous thing because it weakens our joint defense efforts.

[Stephanie Flanders]

Ambassador, the Rearm Europe program aims to have more than 50% of weapons made in the EU. That, that's the plan. And the question attached to that is because there are doubts in Europe about whether the US is a reliable partner for defense supplies.

[Andrew Puzder]

Well, I'll tell you, the defense industrial base is filled with joint ventures and joint efforts by American and European manufacturers, also Japanese manufacturers. And this is, we have a very integrated system here. And I think that approach to military spending, to defense spending ignores many things including the, was it 80 year, 80 year old NATO alliance and the effectiveness

[Interviewer]

of that alliance quite a lot in the past year. I think that has a lot of people questioning elements of the NATO alliance. Is it fair for them to question this element as well?

[Andrew Puzder]

Well, not really. The United States is not withdrawing from NATO and the President has made that clear and the Secretary of State has made that clear. You don't need the ambassador to the EU to make that clear. Matt Whitaker says it, you know, our ambassador to NATO says it probably ten times a week. We are here, we have, we have more troops here in Europe than all of the European militaries added together. You know, we've got our nuclear umbrella that protects Europe. That's not, you know, that's not going anywhere. And if it did go somewhere, it's not something that Europe would be able to replace.

[Interviewer]

So I think Emmanuel Macron would like to. What's your view of that plan?

[Andrew Puzder]

Well, he'd sure have to make a whole lot more, he'd have to produce a whole lot more nuclear weapons than he has currently. And I don't know that France is in A particularly advantageous economic position to do that at the moment.

[Interviewer]

I think France, your message to be you is be you don't have to worry about the nuclear umbrella, that that's

[Andrew Puzder]

perfectly safe, you can't match it and nobody's talking about taking it away. So let's focus on things that are actually important that we actually can do. Let's talk about strengthening NATO. Let's, let's talk about building up the European economy, about deregulation and having pro growth policies so that Europe can actually meet this 5% of GDP requirement that they've agreed to with NATO. Poland was out, I think is either the Prime Minister or the president of Poland was out just last week saying look, we're at 5% but the only way we've gotten here is we've got pretty good economic growth. So tax revenue is going up because we have growth. Well, the rest of Europe really doesn't have that growth. I mean we're seeing GDP declines, we're seeing declines in standards of living and we, we need to see those things re energized, we need to see re industrialization. We need to see Europe participating in the AI economy. We need to see the kinds of growth. Europe talks about competitiveness. I'm not, I wish they would stop talking about how they're going to compete with other people and just talk about how they're going to grow their economy. Europeans need, the European economy needs to grow. When it grows, it will be competitive.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of the ministers who would agree with you that the issues of competitiveness and growth are intertwined. But you know, part of the plan and you talk about reindustrialation is the Industrial Accelerator Act. That's going to have, we're told by the debates going on this made in Europe pledge. So is that they're going about it the wrong way. There are, there's action being taken by the EU on all of these fronts.

[Andrew Puzder]

I think, I think the European Union has the right to put whatever language it wants in these agreements, whether it's to benefit Europe or to, and they, and they do need to do things that will benefit Europe because Europe needs to catch up on growth. It's falling increasingly behind. However, be careful when you do it and be careful where you do it because if you may cut out joint ventures, you may cut out opportunities to work together on technology or research that would actually be damaging to the European economy. This is why I say we need, we need pro growth policies in Europe that are focused on increasing economic growth. And we need deregulation, not simplification. It's not that. The problem isn't that we've got a bunch of regulations that are too complicated, although you do have a bunch of regulations that are too complicated. But the problem is you just have too many regulations, period. And it's not and this isn't just me saying this as the ambassador from the United States, but Chancellor Merits has been very, very vocal about this recently, as has Prime Minister Dev ever. They've been out saying, look, we've got too much regulation. We've become the champion of regulation. And that's been at the sacrifice of innovation. And Europe, you know, we're within, I don't know, 500 miles of the greatest accomplishments in human history. From the perspective of innovation, that's not happening here because we have a lack of people that are innovative. It's not happening here because they're being regulated off the continent. And it's something that needs to be addressed, I think, very quickly.

[Interviewer]

Okay, well, we thank you for bringing us your analysis of that and your viewpoint this morning. The U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Andrew Puzder. Thank you very much for joining us.

[Andrew Puzder]

My pleasure to both of you. Thank you.

[Public Ad Narrator]

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[Stephanie Flanders]

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