Europe Rushes to Negotiate a Trade Deal as Trump’s Team Voices Indifference

Maros Sefcovic, one of the European Union's top trade negotiators, is headed to Washington on Wednesday to talk to Trump administration officials in a bid to stop painful 30 percent tariffs from kicking in on Aug. 1.

But at a time when E.U. officials are hoping that President Trump’s latest tariff threat is more of a negotiating gambit than a serious possibility, the latest comments from the White House have offered little encouragement.

Mr. Trump is “indifferent whether we take in the 30 percent rate or whether the Europeans come to us with a much better deal,” Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said on Bloomberg Television on Tuesday, later calling this moment a “generational opportunity to reset trade.”

Mr. Trump told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday that “we already have a deal with the E.U.,” referring to the letter he sent last week to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, threatening to increase across-the-board tariffs.

That is the backdrop of the latest visit by Mr. Sefcovic, the European Union trade commissioner. He is expected to meet separately with Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said Olof Gill, a spokesman for the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm.

Mr. Sefcovic has flown to Washington repeatedly in recent months, and has spoken by phone with Mr. Greer and Mr. Lutnick already this week.

He and other European trade negotiators had thought until last week that their constant contact with the Trump administration was about to yield results and that they were close to striking a deal. The agreement was widely expected to include a 10 percent across-the-board tariff rate, while securing exceptions for key products. Instead, they received Mr. Trump’s letter on July 11 threatening to boost levies to a level that European policymakers have warned would be devastating for the trans-Atlantic trading relationship.

It is not clear what Europe could offer the United States that it has not already put forward. The bloc was willing to accept higher tariffs, to buy more American energy and to invest more in American technology, among other concessions. But it has refused to bend to some Trump administration demands, including changing how it regulates large technology companies and online speech.

“I don’t think there’s this magic” solution, said Jörn Fleck, a senior director with the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. “I think it’s in the Trump administration’s hands.”

The European Union has been drawing up plans to retaliate if negotiations fail by hitting a wide array of American imports with tariffs.

When asked on Tuesday about those plans, Mr. Trump said simply that “I don’t know how they can retaliate.”

“They’ve treated us very badly, but now they’re treating us very nicely,” he added. “I think everybody’s going to be happy with the E.U.”