As I see it, France may benefit from its trade with the US because it has a global trade deficit so the extra dollars from America can be used to buy, say, oil

As I see it, France may benefit from its trade with the US because it has a global trade deficit so the extra dollars from America can be used to buy, say, oil from the Gulf. But for Germany and for EU as a whole (or China etc), the surplus dollars will probably never be used to buy anything useful so these exports look like a tribute offered to US.