Under-fire EU says trade deal with Trump was best it could do

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Brussels says it struck the best trade deal it could with Washington — even if Paris and other European capitals aren’t buying it.

In a last-ditch effort to fend off Donald Trump’s threat to raise tariffs on most EU goods to 30 percent on Aug. 1, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday flew with her negotiating team to the U.S. president’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland and, in about an hour, locked down a preliminary deal.

“This is clearly the best deal we could get under very difficult circumstances,” EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič said Monday.

The deal, which imposes a 15 percent tariff on most imports from the EU, “saves trade flows, saves the jobs in Europe” and “opens a new chapter in EU-U.S. relations,” he told reporters.

“It’s not only about … trade: It’s about security, it is about Ukraine, it is about current geopolitical volatility,” said Šefčovič, indicating that guaranteeing Washington’s continued military support for Ukraine and NATO played a central part in the negotiations — and in pushing Brussels to clinch a deal.

But while the EU executive hails the mere fact of sealing a deal a success, that didn’t satisfy some EU heavyweights like France and industry lobbies, which accused Brussels of giving in too easily to Trump’s demands.

Unlike German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who were quick to welcome the deal, French President Emmanuel Macron has remained silent. His Prime Minister François Bayrou, meanwhile, slammed the accord as an act of “submission” to Washington.

Germany’s main industry lobby BDI said it sent “a fatal sign” regarding the future of transatlantic trade. In France, big-business group Medef said the outcome demonstrates that the EU still struggles to win respect, while the country’s confederation of small- and medium-sized enterprises said the deal will have a “disastrous impact.”

“The lesson of this agreement: We are an economic giant but a political dwarf,” said Valerie Heyer, leader of the liberal Renew group in the European Parliament, joining the chorus of disapproval from French politicians.

As good as it gets?

“It was heavy lifting we had to do,” von der Leyen said after her meeting with Trump on Sunday evening. “But now we made it.”

Yes, the EU made it — but at a significant political and economic price that some regard as too high.

“Trump has won, there’s no question about that,” Bernd Lange, a German Social Democrat who chairs the trade committee in the European Parliament, told POLITICO.

As part of the deal, Brussels not only agreed to lower its tariffs to zero on some U.S. imports such as cars, but also committed to purchase $750 billion worth of energy and to invest $600 billion more than planned in the U.S.

What’s more, the provisional agreement — which isn’t legally binding and still has to be locked in through a joint statement, to be published ahead of Aug. 1 — leaves a host of points open, giving Trump wiggle room to change his mind further down the line.

The Commission has, for instance, been reassured that sectors that are currently undergoing separate investigations in the U.S. and might soon face sectoral tariffs, such as pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, won’t face a tariff higher than 15 percent. But there’s no legal guarantee of that.

Steel and aluminum will remain subject to 50 percent tariffs after both sides committed to work together to create a ring fence to address global overcapacity.

David Kleimann, a senior trade expert at the ODI think tank in Brussels, called the deal a “clear-cut political defeat for the EU.”

“The optics of an EU Commission president surrendering to a U.S. President Trump may have lasting effects on the identification of the Union’s citizens with the supranational project,” he added.

No gun on the table

Throughout the lengthy negotiation process France has played the role of the bad cop, accusing the Commission of being too weak and calling on Brussels to resort to heavier trade weapons including its trade “bazooka,” the Anti-Coercion Instrument.

The European Commission won approval from national capitals to prepare and eventually strike back with retaliatory tariffs hitting nearly €100 billion in U.S. goods, and to look into readying the instrument — which could be used to target services or restrict access to public procurement tenders.

But it never resorted to using those tools, even after Trump escalated the standoff earlier this month by threatening to jack up tariffs if no deal were done by Aug. 1. EU countries repeatedly shied away from giving the Commission a mandate to get tougher.

“There has not been a united front of member countries calling for confrontation over the past days,” said Elvire Fabry, a trade expert at the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris. That’s why Brussels was never able to go beyond threatening to deploy the Anti-Coercion Instrument.

And, as Šefčovič acknowledged, Brussels has to think very hard before launching a full-scale trade war with an ally it relies on for its security and energy.

“There is a dependence on U.S. security guarantees on Ukraine and energy dependency which limits the EU’s ability to confront the U.S.,” Fabry said.

Antonia Zimmermann reported from Brussels and Giorgio Leali reported from Paris. Oliver Noyan and Romanus Otte contributed reporting from Berlin.

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