EU left fuming as Trump slaps on 50% tariffs - 'have some respect!'

The has reacted defiantly to 's threat to slap a 50% tariff on EU imports. The US President on Friday (May 23) threatened the tax on all imports from the bloc. The Republican leader said he wanted to charge higher import taxes on goods from the EU than from , which saw its tariffs rate cut to 30%.

Maros Sefcovic, the EU's top trade official, posted on X that he had spoken on Friday with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Mr Sefcovic said: "The EU's fully engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both. EU-US trade is unmatched [and] must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests."

The US president had earlier appeared upset at the lack of progress in trade talks with Brussels, which proposed mutually cutting tariffs to zero even as the president publicly insisted on preserving a baseline 10% tax on most imports. He wrote on his Truth Social platform: "Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the , starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States."

Speaking in the Oval Office, Mr Trump stressed he was not seeking a deal with the EU and might delay the tariffs if more companies invested in the United States. He told reporters: "I'm not looking for a deal. We've set the deal. It's at 50%."

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to provide some clarity on Mr Trump's posting in an interview with Fox News.

Mr Bessent said the EU has a "collective action problem" because its 27 member states are being represented by "this one group in Brussels", such that the "underlying countries don't even know what the EU is negotiating on their behalf".

At the heart of Mr Trump's argument against the EU is that the US runs a "totally unacceptable" trade deficit with the bloc's 27 member states. Countries run trade deficits when they import more goods than they export.

From the vantage point of the EU's executive commission, trade with the US is roughly in balance if both goods and services are included.

As a global centre for finance and technology, the US runs a trade surplus in services with Europe. This offsets some of the trade gap in goods and puts the imbalance at £39.8billion ($54bn).

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the EU's executive commission has his country's full support in working to preserve access to the US market.

He said: "I think such tariffs help no one, but would just lead to economic development in both markets suffering. So we are still counting on negotiations, and support the European Commission in defending Europe and the European market while at the same time working on persuasion in America."

White House aides have said the goal of Mr Trump's tariffs is to isolate China and strike new agreements with allies, but some say the president's tariff threats undermine the logic of such arguments.

German economist Marcel Fratzscher said not only could the EU face higher tariffs than China, but the bloc of member states might have been better off establishing a broad front with China and other countries against Mr Trump's trade policy.

He posted on X: "The strategy of the EU Commission and Germany in the trade conflict with Trump is a total failure. This was a failure you could see coming - Trump sees Europe's wavering, hesitation and concessions as the weaknesses that they are."

Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the 50% tariffs on Europe are most likely a "negotiating ploy" by Mr Trump, as he has previously retreated on tariffs after taking a hard line.

She said Mr Trump seems to believe negotiations operate by going to a "threat point" which could risk self-harm to the US just to demonstrate how serious he is, in hopes that doing so would produce an agreement.

But Ms Lovely said in the long-run Mr Trump's approach suggests that the US is an unreliable trading partner, that it operates on whim and not on rule of law.