Tariffs of 50 per cent will be imposed on all imports to the United States from the EU from the start of next month, Donald Trump said on Friday.
The threat comes amid impatience in Washington at the pace of negotiations for a trading template agreeable to his administration. In a post on Truth Social, the US president attacked the EU for what he alleged were unfair trade practices and he said negotiations over a new deal were failing.
EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, who had a call with US trade representative Jamieson Greer and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick after Mr Trump’s comments, said the EU was committed to securing a deal that worked for both sides.
The transatlantic relationship needed to be “guided by mutual respect, not threats”, he wrote in a post on social media platform X. “We stand ready to defend our interests.”
Mr Trump issued the no-warning punitive tariff hike in a message on social media on Friday as he lashed out against the EU’s “powerful trade barriers, VAT taxes, ridiculous corporate penalties, non-monetary trade barriers, monetary manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against American companies, and more”, which, he wrote, had “led to a trade deficit with the US of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable”.
The move escalates the trade war with the EU barely two weeks after the US agreed with China to slash tariffs in a pact that had comforted global investors.
Senior officials in the European Commission, the EU’s powerful executive arm leading the tariff negotiations, were blindsided by Mr Trump’s announcement.
The initial assessment of senior sources in Dublin and in Brussels was that Mr Trump’s post on social media was part of a negotiating ploy – though few were willing to be definitive, given the unpredictability of the US conduct since January.
In a statement, Micheál Martin described the announcement by Mr Trump as “enormously disappointing”.
“Tariffs at the level suggested would not only push prices up, they would grievously damage one of the world’s most dynamic and significant trading relationships, as well as disrupting wider global trade,” the Taoiseach said.
Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris said tariffs “are a bad idea. They’re bad for Ireland, the EU, and the US. They push up prices for consumers and businesses. We have built a relationship of prosperity, jobs and investment based on working together and trading together”.
Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, confirmed that the Trump administration had been dissatisfied with the progress of the negotiations under way since the 90-day tariff pause was announced on April 2nd.
“The president believes that the EU proposals have not been of the same quality as we have seen from other important trading partners,” Mr Bessent said.
Before the fresh tariff bombshell, the European Commission had privately not ruled out extending a pause it had put on EU counter-tariffs targeting US trade. The retaliatory measures, to hit US steel products, soybeans, motorcycles and oranges sold into EU states, have not yet come into effect.
The measures had been delayed until mid-July to give time for negotiations to take place.
The EU side has had real difficulty in judging exactly what Mr Trump wants to achieve since the start of the trade war the US president instigated early in his second term.
[ Cliff Taylor: What does Trump’s 50% EU tariff threat mean for Ireland?Opens in new window ]
Attention will now turn to how it should respond. The commission had already been negotiating a second, larger package of counter tariffs to try to put some pressure on the Trump administration to cut a deal.
The EU body proposed hiking levies charged on imports of US cars, aircraft, agricultural products, bourbon whiskey and other goods.
The Government has publicly said it would lobby the commission to pare back the amount of US products hit with tariffs. However, Dublin may now come under pressure to support a stronger EU retaliation.
Separately, in Washington, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has called for submissions on Mr Trump’s plan to cut medicine prices in the US.
The office is seeking comment from “interested parties regarding any act, policy, or practice that may be unreasonable or discriminatory and that has the effect of forcing American patients to pay for a disproportionate amount of global pharmaceutical research and development, including by suppressing the price of pharmaceutical products below fair market value in foreign countries”.
