Trump threatens 50% tariffs on European Union
Announcement sparks market drop on both sides of the pond and sets up tense trade talks in coming days.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to impose a 50% tariff on all European Union imports starting June 1, citing stalled trade negotiations and what he called long-standing unfair trade practices by the bloc.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the EU “has been very difficult to deal with. Their … (policies) have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, which is totally unacceptable. Our discussions with them are going nowhere!”
The threat came just minutes after Trump floated a separate tariff of at least 25% on Apple’s iPhones if the company fails to relocate production to the United States. Both announcements rattled financial markets, with U.S. stock futures falling and European markets dropping 2%, according to CNBC.
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Trump’s remarks follow ongoing tensions between U.S. and EU trade negotiators. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is expected to tell European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič during talks Friday that Brussels’ latest proposal falls short of Washington’s demands, the Financial Times reported.
Greer is pressing the EU to make unilateral tariff reductions on U.S. goods, arguing that reciprocal reductions aren’t sufficient to address the widening U.S. trade deficit with the bloc.
The EU has pushed for a mutually agreed framework for negotiations, but sources familiar with the discussions told the Financial Times that the two sides remain far apart. Washington also is reportedly unhappy that Brussels has not treated its proposed digital tax as negotiable and has not offered the kind of one-sided concessions other partners have made.
Greer and Šefčovič are expected to meet again in Paris next month in what could be a critical test for whether the U.S. and EU can de-escalate the looming trade standoff.
Trump’s rhetoric could mark a return to the aggressive trade tactics that defined his early weeks in office, before many of his ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs were walked back after a revolt in bond markets. Dow futures dropped over 500 points on the back of the announcements.
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