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News Analysis
Some European politicians are dismayed that the European Union did not drive a harder bargain, but facing the threat of a damaging trade war, officials say they had little choice.
July 29, 2025, 5:53 a.m. ET
European Union officials found themselves on the defensive this week, after agreeing to a blueprint for an unfavorable trade deal with President Trump that will hit most European exports with 15 percent tariffs, while dropping levies on American cars and some farm goods to zero.
François Bayrou, France’s prime minister, said on social media that it was a “dark day” for Europe. Another French minister called the agreement “unbalanced.” A left-leaning European Parliamentarian from Belgium posted a dismayed, “What happened, Europe?”
E.U. officials offered a simple response. The situation could have become a disaster, setting off an all-out trade war.
Still, the agreement is worse for Europe than just about anyone in the bloc’s upper echelons would have predicted just a few weeks ago, and even that required a combination of concessions, salesmanship and flattery.
It might nevertheless be one of the better results Europe could have obtained, said Aslak Berg, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London.
“A lot of the initial reaction is that this a political defeat, this is a humiliation for the European Union,” Mr. Berg said. He added: “Is it what the E.U. wanted? No. Is it ideal? No. But if this agreement sticks — big if — it will provide a certain degree of predictability.”
The challenge began in earnest on April 2, which Mr. Trump often called “liberation day.” That afternoon, in the White House Rose Garden, the president announced new, often punishingly high, tariffs, including 20 percent for the European Union.
“It’s quite obvious that the world which was there before the second of April is gone,” Maros Sefcovic, the European Union’s trade commissioner, said at a news conference on Monday. “And we simply need to adjust.”
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At the time, Europeans hoped to negotiate to sharply lower that rate, and even planned to retaliate if that effort failed. But getting the bloc’s 27 member states on board for a unified and full-throated response proved difficult from the start, as nations lobbied to protect critical industries.
As the months passed, Mr. Trump’s tariff threats became more strident. He briefly threatened 50 percent tariffs on the bloc, then later vowed to hit the European Union with 30 percent tariffs if it failed to make a deal.
Initially, E.U. officials dismissed such figures as mere negotiating gambits. Diplomats and officials were critical of the deal that Britain struck with Mr. Trump, which locked in 10 percent tariffs. The European Union was such a huge and important economy, the logic went, that it should have the leverage to push for something better.
But over weeks of grueling discussions with American negotiators — Mr. Sefcovic’s team made 10 visits to Washington, in addition to a flurry of calls and messages — E.U. trade officials came around to the view that Mr. Trump was serious.
That was driven home on Sunday night, when Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, met with Mr. Trump at a golf course in Scotland to try to make a deal.
Mr. Sefcovic, who was at the meeting, said, “If you would have been in a room yesterday, you would see that they really started at 30 percent.”
Mr. Trump had long flouted bipartisan American orthodoxy, describing the European Union as a hostile adversary, and global trade as a system that takes advantage of the United States. He seemed willing to follow through on his tariff threats, even if it meant damaging the trans-Atlantic relationship.
In the spring, European officials hoped to negotiate Mr. Trump’s across-the-board tariffs down to the low single digits that prevailed before this year. When they realized that was not realistic, they aimed for 10 percent.
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As Mr. Trump’s seriousness became evident across dozens of discussions with his team over recent weeks — especially with Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative — European negotiators slowly crept toward a plan to bend on major goals.
By late last week, it had become clear they would settle for 15 percent, in line with several other American trading partners.
E.U. officials had initially pushed for zero tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic for cars and industrial products. Instead, American exporters will now face zero tariffs on those goods, and European exporters will face 15 percent tariffs, senior European Commission officials said.
Some European politicians, particularly from France, had wanted the bloc to fight harder to avoid higher levies.
E.U. officials had drawn up retaliatory tariffs that would have applied to a wide array of American goods, but paused them in April to allow time for negotiation, and then again this month. Last week they finalized plans to hit 93 billion euros’ worth of American products with tariffs, effective Aug. 7, but expects to suspend those countermeasures in light of the new agreement.
Discord always boiled under the surface. Wine and spirit exporting countries initially pushed successfully for alcohols to be dropped from Europe’s retaliatory tariff list, after Mr. Trump threatened to hit them back even harder. Different nations took different views on whether even more extreme measures, like hitting American service companies with trade retaliation, should be seriously considered.
And as the Aug. 1 effective date for Mr. Trump’s 30 percent tariffs drew closer, European officials considered just how painful retaliation might be if it were to unleash an all-out trade war. Mr. Trump had said repeatedly that if any trading partner imposed retaliatory levies of its own, he would respond with vastly higher ones.
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The European Union did not cave on all of its priorities. It made no agreements to change its stricter regulations on digital businesses, which the Trump administration had sought. Nor did it agree to accept sensitive agricultural products like chicken and beef.
Some of the wins that U.S. officials are now celebrating, like ramped-up purchases of American energy products, would have likely have happened anyway, at least in part. Europe had already been working to diversify away from Russian fuel.
Plus, said Mr. Sefcovic, the European trade commissioner, the impetus to make a deal — with many elements yet to be hammered out or made public — was not only about tariff rates.
“I cannot go into all of the details” of what was discussed in the room with Mr. Trump, he said, but “I can assure you that it was not just about the trade.”
Mr. Sefcovic suggested that issues including security, Ukraine and Russia also factored in. Europe has been working hard to keep the United States engaged in NATO at a time when Russia is more aggressively expansionist, and when the Trump administration is insisting that European nations shoulder more of their own defense spending. And Mr. Trump has at times wavered on his support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia.
At a moment when the United States has become a more combative and more challenging partner for Europe, the tariff agreement avoids a full-fledged trade war that would have been punished both sides.
“A trade war may seem appealing to some, but it comes with serious consequences,” said Mr. Sefcovic. The deal “saves the trade flows, saves the jobs in Europe, and opens a new chapter in E.U.-U.S. relations.”
He did not say it would be a rosier chapter.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
