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It’s 45 days after US President Donald Trump announced a 90-Day pause in the trade war he launched against partners across the globe, but negotiations between the EU and the US appear not to have moved on one inch in that time.
A week after both sides sent each other letters with their respective offers, Trump threatened on his social media Truth to impose “a straight 50% tariffs on European Union” starting on 1 June 2025.
“The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with,” Trump wrote, adding: “Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies, and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 (sic) a year, a number which is totally unacceptable.”
The EU has always rebuffed US calculations of the trade deficit, pointing to a US surplus on services and deducing as a result that there’s a trade surplus of no more than €50 billion for the EU.
Currently, the US imposes 25% tariffs on EU aluminium, steel and cars and blanket 10% tariffs on all EU imports to the US.
Last week, the Commission, which negotiates on trade deals on behalf of the 27 member states, received a letter from the US administration to which it replied.
Officials who saw both offers saw little hope of seeing the negotiations progress by the time the 90-Day pause period ends, not only because the US is caught up in numerous negotiations with its partners around the world, but also because both offers were radically far apart.
The EU is proposing zero-to-zero tariffs on all industrial goods and purchases of US liquefied natural gas, AI technology and non-sensitive agri-products such as soybeans. It also hopes its proposal to collaborate with the US administration on some common issues vis-à-vis China, such as overcapacities, could help move negotiations forward.
Diplomatic sources told Euronews there are slim chances that the EU will manage to return to the level of tariffs that existed before Trump’s trade war, even if a majority of EU member states is still hoping to do so.
The Commission itself has proposed a €95 billion package of countermeasures to “rebalance” the trade relations if the negotiation fails. It would come on top of a first list of US products worth €21 billion that would be hit by EU tariffs and which was suspended after Trump announced a truce.
Maroš Šefčovič has three times travelled to Washington to meet US counterparts Howard Lutnick and US trade representative Jamieson Greer. The EU is hoping that the US might turn the dial by agreeing to a meeting between Šefčovič and his US counterparts in June on the occasion of an OECD meeting in Paris, on home turf.
For weeks, the Commission has been saying that meetings were taking place at “technical” level between both sides of the Atlantic. But the negotiation proper has not started.
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