Trump delays EU tariffs until July 9
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
By Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson
President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he would delay imposing 50% tariffs on all imports from the European Union until July 9 to allow more time for trade negotiations.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that he had spoken to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, about his recent threat to enact the tariffs on June 1 if a trade deal could not be reached in the next week.
Trump has expressed frustration over negotiations with the EU, saying that the union has been slow to offer trade concessions during a 90-day window to reach a deal that satisfies the administration. But his threat to hit the EU with a steep tariff raised the chances of an economically destabilizing trade war with one of the world’s largest economies.
On Sunday, Trump appeared to relent, at least for now.
“The Commission President said that talks will begin rapidly,” Trump wrote, referring to von der Leyen. The European Commission is the executive arm of the European Union.
Von der Leyen, in a separate social media post Sunday, said that she had a “good call” with Trump and had conveyed to him that the EU needed extra time to reach a trade deal. She said that talks would advance “swiftly and decisively.”
“The EU and the U.S. share the world’s most consequential and close trade relationship,” she wrote.
The extension is the latest turnabout by Trump, whose trade policies have injected substantial uncertainty into the global economy. While announcing his recommendation for 50% EU tariffs on Friday, Trump had assailed Europe’s negotiating tactics and expressed no interest in reaching a deal.
When asked if there was anything Europe could do to avoid tariffs, he had responded, “I don’t know, we’re going to see what happens,” adding, “they’ve treated us very badly over the years.”
Friday’s threat of 50% tariffs came after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with European counterparts as part of the Group of 7 meetings in Canada. Bessent had given no indication to his counterparts that new tariffs were coming, but he defended them Friday. “I would hope that this would light a fire under the EU,” he said on Fox News.
Bessent said Europe has a “collective action” problem and that individual countries in the EU did not know how Brussels was negotiating.
Trump’s tariff threat against the EU came weeks after he agreed to partially pause the 145% tariffs he had imposed on Chinese imports.
Economists have warned that the tariffs and related uncertainty were slowing business investment worldwide and disrupting supply chains. Many analysts have raised their forecasts for the likelihood of a global recession.
European officials held a call with their U.S. counterparts for trade talks Friday, and had earlier submitted a term sheet detailing their offers to secure a deal.
European leaders have offered to reduce tariffs on industrial goods to zero if the United States does the same, and to increase purchases of U.S. energy, among other commitments. In return, they hope to reduce tariffs Trump has applied to all European products, as well as specific tariffs on goods like cars and pharmaceuticals.
But Trump and his advisers have said they were unimpressed by Europe’s offers. They continue to criticize a European value-added tax and other policies they say discriminate against U.S. businesses.
In a post on Truth Social on Friday morning, Trump wrote that discussions with the European Union were “going nowhere” and that he was recommending a 50% tariff on European imports as of June 1.
Trump also threatened a 25% tariff on imports of smartphones made by Apple and other companies Friday, saying they should be made in the United States.
Economists at Oxford Economics said that if implemented, the EU tariffs and the phone tariffs, combined, would reduce economic growth by 0.2 percentage point, raise inflation by 0.2 percentage point and increase the unemployment rate by one-tenth of a percentage point.
“The proposed tariffs on the EU highlight a key forecast risk, whereby tariffs remain an ongoing tool to be wielded by the Trump administration whenever negotiations hit a snag,” economists Ryan Sweet and Bernard Yaros wrote.
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