Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – The European Union remains “fully committed” to reaching a trade agreement with the United States, the bloc’s trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said Monday following calls with top US officials. The contacts come after US President Donald Trump threatened Friday, but then postponed, to hit EU goods with a huge tariff, voicing frustration that talks with the EU were “going nowhere.” Sefcovic said in a post on X that he had “good calls” with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. “We continue to stay in constant contact,” he added.
Trump has called for eliminating the EU’s surplus in goods trade with the United States. On Friday, he threatened to impose 50-percent tariffs on the bloc from June 1, sending markets into a tailspin. The US president had already hit the bloc with multiple waves of tariffs, including 25-percent duties on cars, steel, and aluminum. The European Commission has been leading talks on behalf of the 27-country bloc in search of a mutually beneficial deal with Washington—though with little to show so far.
But Trump agreed Sunday to delay the heftier levies on the EU until July 9 after a phone call with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen. While the dollar remained under pressure Monday, European markets rallied over news of the delayed tariffs. “The stock market seems to dance to Trump’s tune: first a threat, then a pullback, quickly followed by a rebound as speculative investors anticipate a concession from the US president,” said Jochen Stanzl, chief market analyst at CMC Markets trading platform.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Monday criticised Trump’s “terrible language” about the European Union, in response to his comments that the bloc was formed to “screw” the United States. “It’s against history. And it’s certainly not the purpose of this region,” she said, urging negotiations on a deal. The EU remains subject to a 10-percent tariff that Trump imposed last month on imports from nearly every country around the world.
Brussels is consulting with member states on plans to impose tariffs on US goods worth nearly 100 billion euros ($113 billion) if negotiations fail to produce a deal. The US trade deficit in goods with the European Union was $236 billion in 2024. But when taking account of services, where US firms are dominant, the European Commission calculates that the overall US trade deficit stood at $57 billion. Sefcovic has said that the European Union could cover that figure by buying US liquefied natural gas and some farm products.
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