Most worrying aspect of Coldplay concert scandal has to be the ubiquity of online tripe
Coldplay couple
story?' a colleague said to me the other day. I very much doubted I would know.
We were speaking nearly a week after Andy Byron, the chief executive of tech company Astronomer, was caught on a giant video screen at a Coldplay concert in Boston with his arms wrapped around a woman who was a) his head of HR and b) not his wife.
Byron had by then been a top-trending Google topic from Australia to Albania, and it seemed unlikely there was anything compelling left to say about him.
But my colleague made a good point: for those of us who deal with the vast corporate PR industrial complex, it was notable to watch a top executive fall so comprehensively that no amount of fudging or obfuscation could save him.
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The Coldplay concert happened on a Wednesday. Astronomer's board said it was investigating the matter on Friday. Byron resigned on Saturday. The HR head went less than a week later.
Never having heard of Astronomer before, I have no idea about its normal PR strategies. Perhaps it always takes this forthright approach to bad news. That would make it unusual in a world where media inquiries about corporate impropriety, no matter how well-founded, are often met with a 'no comment', a huffy denial, or a threat of legal action.
It's been like this for years, as a lay-off strewn news industry continues to confront a far more buoyant public relations sector. In the US alone, there were nearly five PR people for every journalist in 2013 and by some counts, the ratio has since widened to more than six to one.
There are, of course, a lot of decent PR professionals and yes, journalists have long been among the least trusted people. Though a 2024 global survey suggests we are now doing better than politicians and are level with bankers and, as it happens, business leaders.
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This improvement is welcome because the Coldplay affair underlines another critical point: the need for robust journalism in an age of rampant and grimly effective fake social media 'news'. One of the most notable aspects of the incident was the spread of fabricated online statements purporting to be from those involved.
Contrary to what you might have read (and may still believe), Byron did not say he found it troubling that 'what should have been a private moment became public without my consent'.
His wife did not post a tearful statement about the scandal. Coldplay did not say it would now have camera-free audience sections for people and their 'sidepieces'.
Likewise, the red-faced woman filmed standing next to Byron and his HR head was not another Astronomer employee named Alyssa.
This avalanche of online tripe was so gigantic that Astronomer had to address it head-on.
'Alyssa Stoddard was not at the event and no other employees were in the video,' it said in a statement. 'Andy Byron has not put out any statement; reports saying otherwise are all incorrect.'
Alas, this came too late for some newspapers, which reported Byron's statement as fact. On the upside, proper news outlets corrected the mistake. Don't expect to see anything like this from the hoaxers, nor the social media platforms that hosted their nonsense.
And here is the serious point. Coldplay-gate doubtless caused hurt for those at the centre of it, and their families. But so far, the hoaxes it spurred have been relatively harmless compared with the plethora of online scams that continue to go unchecked. In the European Union alone, the latest figures show that internet fraudsters swindled people out of €4.3 billion in 2022.
Since then, there has been an explosion of artificial intelligence tools that help scammers make cheap and convincing fake videos of financial experts to lure consumers into making dodgy investments or disclosing personal data. Social media companies insist they remove adverts for this rot and constantly try to stay ahead of the fakers.
But as my colleague
Martin Wolf
wrote after discovering his identity had been faked by financial fraudsters, it is hard to believe tech giants, with all their resources, cannot do better.
The same goes for all the other unfettered online harm. Some governments are trying to legislate against this muck, notably in the EU. The Coldplay couple – and the misleading maelstrom that followed their exposure – are a reminder that many more authorities need to join them. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
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Irish Times
14 hours ago
- Irish Times
US ICE agents took half their workforce. What do they do now?
They gathered in a conference room for the weekly management meeting, even though there was hardly anyone left to manage . Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha , pushed a few empty chairs to the side of the room and then passed around a sheet totalling the latest production numbers. 'Take a deep breath and brace yourselves,' he said. For more than a decade, Glenn Valley's production reports had told a story of a steady ascent – new hires, new manufacturing lines, new sales records for one of the fastest-growing meatpacking companies in the midwest. But, in a matter of weeks, production had plummeted by almost 70 per cent. Most of the workforce was gone. READ MORE Half of the maintenance crew was in the process of being deported, the director of human resources had stopped coming to work, and more than 50 employees were being held at a detention facility in rural Nebraska. Hartmann (52), folded the printed sheet into tiny squares and waited out the silence. 'So, this gives you a pretty good sense of the work we have ahead of us,' he said. 'It's a wipeout,' said Gary Rohwer, the owner. 'We're building back up from ground zero.' [ Deportation anxiety in Irish America: 'I would have a clean slate before travelling' Opens in new window ] Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods, at his office in Omaha. Photograph: Erin Schaff/New York Times Trump target It had been three weeks since dozens of federal agents arrived at the factory's door with a battering ram and a warrant for 107 workers who they said were undocumented immigrants using false identification – part of a wave of workplace raids carried out by the Trump administration this summer. The president's advisers had set a target of 3,000 arrests a day, shifting the focus of enforcement away from the border and into the heart of the US economy . Trump had vowed to pursue 'bloodthirsty criminals' during his campaign, but he had also promised the 'largest mass deportation in history,' which meant agents were rounding up hundreds of immigrants from restaurant kitchens, avocado groves, construction sites and meat processing facilities, where most of the workforce was foreign-born. Rohwer (84), had always used a federal online system called E-Verify to check whether his employees were eligible to work, and Glenn Valley Foods had not been accused of any violations. Rohwer was a registered Republican in a conservative state, but he voted for a Democrat for the first time in the 2024 election, in part because of Trump's treatment of immigrants. He couldn't square the government's accusations of 'criminal dishonesty' with the employees he'd known for decades as 'salt-of-the-earth, incredible people who helped build this company,' he said. 'There are some jobs Americans don't want to do,' Gary Rohwer tried explaining to one caller. Photograph: Erin Schaff/ The New York Times Most of them had no criminal history, aside from a handful of traffic violations. Many were working mothers, and now they were calling the office from detention, asking for legal advice. Their children, US citizens, were struggling at home and in some cases subsisting on donations of the company's frozen steak. [ Significant rise in Irish people seeking State help to avoid US deportation Opens in new window ] 'I'm still furious about what happened to our people, but we have to keep the machines running,' Rohwer said. 'We need more people trained and ready to go.' He looked out into the lobby and saw three women filling out applications. Glenn Valley paid well, with an average hourly wage of almost $20 (€17) and regular bonuses, but the work was repetitive and demanding. Employees from Mexico and Central America stood on a manufacturing line for 10 hours a day, six days a week, and processed hundreds of pounds of meat through dangerous machinery in a cold factory. Ever since videos of the raid spread across social media, Rohwer had answered dozens of calls from strangers who accused him of 'stealing American jobs'. But Nebraska was experiencing a work shortage, with only 66 qualified workers for every 100 jobs. Almost every one of the company's new applicants was also a Hispanic immigrant. 'There are some jobs Americans don't want to do,' Rohwer tried explaining to one caller. 'We're caught up in a broken system.' The department of homeland security had accused many of the company's former employees of working under stolen IDs, which E-Verify didn't always catch if the ID number itself was valid. When Rohwer met with officials after the raid to ask for a better system, they told him to keep using E-Verify. One agent gave the company a hotline number to call for hiring questions. Hartmann tried it once and waited on hold for 57 minutes before giving up. 'They said the only thing we can do is verify, verify, verify,' Rohwer said. 'But we're already doing that,' Hartmann said. 'How do we avoid ending up in the same situation?' Hiring process Their first step was to rebuild the hiring process, so one morning Hartmann met in his office with the company's newest employee, Alfredo Moreno. It was Moreno's second day as the human resources director. Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods, with Alfredo Moreno, his new HR director. Photograph: Erin Schaff/ New York Times He still didn't have an office and he'd never seen the factory floor, but Hartmann had given him a stack of dozens of applications to review. 'How many people did you lose total?' Moreno asked. Hartmann looked at his computer and tried to count. 'They arrested 76, which doesn't include the ones who were too shaken up to come back,' he said. 'How does that happen if you E-Verify and do everything right?' 'I think I can help you with that part,' Moreno said. He had spent the past 25 years hiring for pork plants and chicken factories across the midwest, and he'd shown up at Glenn Valley unannounced a few days after the raid, convinced he understood their problem. Over the years, Moreno had reviewed hundreds of applicants through E-Verify, checking their ID and social security numbers against federal records to confirm they were eligible to work. In his experience, E-Verify was good at checking numbers, not people. The government maintained that Glenn Valley employees had been using IDs that were stolen. One number belonged to a nursing student in Missouri, who lost her student loans as a result of the identity theft. Another came from a disabled man in Texas, who could no longer get his medications. Moreno told Hartmann that the only way to truly prevent fraud was to scrutinise IDs with black lights and magnifying glasses to make sure they weren't fake, and interview each potential employee in person. He had memorised regional accents and studied the geographies of Central America, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. He estimated that about half of the people he interviewed for meat processing jobs lied about their documentation. The ICE raid happened on June 10th, a Tuesday morning. Photograph: Erin Schaff/ The New York Times 'I ask where they were born, what town, where they travelled,' Moreno said. 'Does the person on paper fit the person in the chair? I don't want to say I interrogate, but I ask very specific questions without discriminating.' 'Yes. I like that,' Hartmann said. 'Because we can't go through this again. Honestly, it was very traumatic for everyone involved.' The ICE raid Hartmann started to tell Moreno about that Tuesday morning, when the company was humming through one of its best months in 12 years. More than 130 workers walked into the factory at 7am. All five manufacturing lines started moving at full speed. Hartmann was taste-testing a new meat product with the sales team when he heard a knock on the front door. He walked into the lobby and saw several agents in tactical vests, carrying nightsticks and wearing bandannas to cover their faces. [ Irish tech worker detained by immigration agents in US for 100 days: 'I didn't know when I was getting home' Opens in new window ] His first thought was that maybe one employee had got into trouble, but then he glanced outside and saw several government vans, a drone circling the roofline and dozens more agents surrounding the property. 'We're going to be busy here,' one of the agents said. They moved past Hartmann into the factory, shouting instructions in Spanish, telling workers to come out with their hands up. Most complied, but a few dozen people started to scream and run. A group of five women clambered up stacks of packing pallets. Other workers enclosed themselves inside industrial freezers, only emerging after they lost feeling in their arms and hands. Hartmann saw a maintenance worker named Marvin Zepeda (37), scamper into the rafters with his tool belt. Zepeda was responsible for cleaning offices, and his colleagues had once nominated him for employee of the month because of his ability to laugh and tell jokes even while checking mousetraps. Now Zepeda squeezed into a crawl space in the ceiling and resisted orders to come out, holding agents off by displaying his box cutter and other tools. An agent shot him with a Taser. Zepeda pulled the probes out of his leg, retreated farther into the crawl space and threw tools in the direction of the agents. They shocked him again and threatened to send in a dog. Finally, a factory manager went into the crawl space, calmed Zepeda down and helped persuade him to surrender. Agents restrained his wrists and led him out of the factory. Zepeda spotted Hartmann in the lobby and flashed him a smile and a thumbs-up as the agents walked him toward a bus with the windows blacked out. 'The whole thing just gutted me, and obviously I had it easy,' Hartmann told Moreno. 'It's terrible for everyone,' Moreno said. 'I've seen whole companies go under after a raid. The supply chain stalls. Beef prices go up. Consumers pay more.' 'The ripple effects,' Hartmann said, nodding. He pulled up a roster of the company's former employees and started to read through names: Ruiz. Gonzalez. Hernandez. Rodriguez. 'That's the part I keep thinking about,' Hartmann said. 'What happens to these people?' The son of a meatpacking worker who has been detained since a major raid at her plant in Omaha takes a call from her. Photograph: Erin Schaff/ The New York Times Detention centre It had taken three days for Elizabeth Rodriguez's family to figure out where she was. Her children had seen the raid on Facebook and watched videos that showed Rodriguez (46), being marched on to a bus in her factory smock and hard hat. Her eldest son, Omar (23), searched detention records and contacted her co-workers, police and local politicians. 'Where are they taking her?' he kept asking, until his mother finally called from a detention centre across the state. 'This call will be limited to 15 minutes,' a recording warned, and his life had been revolving around those phone calls ever since. Now, Omar felt his phone ringing again in his pocket and checked the number. 'Mom Jail,' the caller ID read. He answered and waited for the line to connect. His parents had spent the past 25 years in Omaha, building a life with such care and stability that to Omar it started to feel 'normal, even stable,' he said. His parents met in Mexico and eventually crossed the border together on foot in their teens. They married in Nebraska, found work and bought a small house on the outskirts of downtown where they could raise their four children, all US citizens. A few months earlier, Omar had encouraged his mother to hire a lawyer to help her explore a path to citizenship. She had a 'perfect case,' the lawyer wrote: No criminal record. Long-standing ties to the community. A steady job with good reviews. She took on extra hours to pay legal fees and nursed sores on her feet. It wasn't in her nature to complain, not even now, about the raid, the detention centre or the lawyer she could no longer seem to reach. 'How are you?' Omar asked in Spanish, once Elizabeth came on the line. Her children crowded on to the couch and gathered around the phone. 'I'm fine,' she said. 'Tell me about all of you. Are you eating? Sleeping?' 'Don't worry,' Omar said. 'Everything's OK.' This was how they survived these calls: each side reassuring the other even as they continued to unravel. Omar was working the graveyard shift at a call centre to help pay for groceries. His two younger sisters, aged 17 and 13, were trying to cook for the family from their mother's recipes. Omar's younger brother, aged seven, was waking up at night short of breath, wheezing and choking, until Omar took him to the emergency room. Doctors said he was suffering from panic attacks. He had never spent a night away from Elizabeth, and he didn't understand what it meant to be detained or deported for lacking legal status. The family had decided it was best to tell him that his mother was still at work. 'I'll be home soon,' she told him now. 'When?' he asked. 'I don't know yet,' she said. 'I'm trying my best.' 'You have five minutes remaining on this call,' the automated voice said. Omar took the phone so they could talk through the logistics of her case. She had declined the government's offer of $1,000 (€859) and a free plane ticket to self-deport back to Mexico. Omar was trying to come up with $5,000 (€4,293) to pay for her bond so she could be released to her family while her deportation case played out in the courts. They had all begun drafting letters to submit on her behalf. Omar's oldest sister, 17, had written about how her mother had supported her through episodes of depression, helping her find a therapist and switch schools. 'I am still alive because of my mother,' she wrote to the judge. 'Now that she's gone, it's like I'm breaking a little more every day. I fear what will happen to us if she can't come home.' 'You have one minute remaining,' the automated voice said. 'Are you still there?' Omar asked. 'Yes. I'm here. I love all of you,' she said, and the children took turns saying goodbye. 'Everything is going to work out,' Omar told her, but the line was already dead. Daisy Hernandez, a manager at Glenn Valley Foods. Photograph: Erin Schaff/ The New York Times Skeleton crew The factory was empty. The machines sat silent. Back orders continued to pile up as a skeleton crew arrived at 7am to restart the manufacturing lines. Hartmann walked through the lobby, handing out coffees and greeting eight new employees who were reporting for their first day. They had been interviewed and hired, but they couldn't start until they were authorised to work through E-Verify, so a manager named Daisy Hernandez took their IDs and I-9 forms into her office and started punching in the numbers. None of the eight new hires were US citizens. They had submitted paperwork based on green cards, alien registration numbers, temporary visas and work authorisations. Hernandez tried to log into E-Verify, but her password didn't work. She tried again, and the account was locked. 'How's it going?' Hartmann asked, as he stopped by her office, but the answer was implied: the new employees were playing games on their phones in the break room. The manufacturing lines were falling further behind. Hernandez called Glenn Valley's former HR manager for help, and a few minutes later Hernandez was logged back into the account. She typed a new set of names into the same system and checked the first employee. 'The information entered did not match DHS records.' 'Down to seven,' Hernandez said. She set the application to the side and moved on to the next. 'Alien authorised to work,' it said. Cruz. Rivas. Lopez. Dominguez. 'Authorised to work,' it said, and even if the system had failed them before, it was still what the government suggested they use. Hernandez printed out a batch of company IDs and brought them into the break room, where seven new employees were waiting for their final words of training. 'Thanks for being here in our time of need,' Hartmann said, as he glanced around the room, registering all the people who were still missing. 'We want to thank you for joining our family.' A manager briefed the employees on food safety and handed out white smocks and construction hats. Then he opened the factory door to a rush of cold air and the clatter of machines. The workers lined up alongside a company slogan printed at the entrance. 'Together we achieve more,' it read, and they stepped on to the factory floor. This article originally appeared in The New York Times . An employee at the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska. Photograph: Erin Schaff/ The New York Times
Irish Times
17 hours ago
- Irish Times
EU-US trade deal: Any future US tariffs on pharma exports to be limited to 15%, EU insists
The European Union is confident that any future US tariffs on its exports of pharmaceutical products would be limited to a 15 per cent rate, under the terms of the recent agreement, senior officials have said. The final terms of the deal were worked out during a meeting between European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and US president Donald Trump at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland on Sunday. The deal will lock in tariffs of 15 per cent on most EU imports to the US , but prevent the prospect of an economically devastating trade war. The US has been preparing to levy tariffs on the EU pharma industry, which Mr Trump previously threatened could be at cripplingly high rates of up to 200 per cent. READ MORE The industry has escaped any tariffs to date, but the Trump administration has been planning to hit the sector with specific levies. Ms von der Leyen, who negotiated the final part of the deal with Mr Trump, said the agreement would cap any future pharma tariffs at a blanket 15 per cent rate. The two sides agreed that no tariffs would be charged on imports of aircraft, certain chemicals and some agri-food goods, though the finer details of what agricultural products will benefit from these exemptions are still to be worked out. Challenge for Ireland Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said there is 'no doubt' Ireland is in a challenging position in relation to tariffs but that the agreement does bring 'some clarity'. Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke. Photograph: Conor Ó Mearáin / Collins Photo Agency Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland on Monday, Mr Burke said the EU was four days away from 30 per cent tariffs, which would have been 'significant', while the Government is awaiting more details to emerge. Mr Burke said there would be a number of 'carve-outs' for particular sectors such as aviation, agri-foods and spirits. He said the Government was concerned about the 'stacking mechanism', which refers to the cumulative effect of multiple tariffs applied to the same imported product. 'All of those areas have been called out for separate carve-outs, so we have to see what that will look like and what will that amount to on paper, and that's where the devil is going to be in the detail,' he said. However, businesses are more cautious about the deal. Lobby group Ibec said it represents a 'substantial burden' for many industries, and the most exposed sectors will require Brexit-style supports. 'Our message to the Government, as it was with the 10 per cent tariff, is that the most exposed sectors will require support similar to the interventions provided as a response to Brexit,' he said. Irish whiskey industry The EU and the US sides are to continue negotiations on the finer points of detail, including possible tariff exemptions for several sectors. It is understood spirits are one area on that front where the commission feel they are making progress, which would be welcome news to the Irish whiskey industry, a big exporter to the US. Eoin Ó Catháin, director of the Irish Whiskey Association, told The Irish Times he hopes the deal can 'provide the framework' for a return to zero-for-zero trade in spirits. 'The EU and US government agreed to this zero-for-zero arrangement in 1997, and since then our shared sector has experienced huge growth in value to the benefit of economies and communities on both sides of the Atlantic,' he said. Jameson whiskey: sells over 1 million cases annually across the Atlantic. Photograph: Aidan Crawley/Bloomberg 'It is therefore logical to return to this. As it currently stands, Irish whiskey and drinks producers face a 10 per cent tariff when exporting to the USA – our biggest market. 'This, combined with a weakened dollar, has placed significant pressure on our distillers, and some have unfortunately had to close their doors. A return to zero-to-zero would be a major help to these exporters.' He added he was hopeful 'a mutually beneficial arrangement and the removal of tariffs can be secured'. Dairy Industry Ireland director Conor Mulvihill said confirmation exports will now be subject to a single 15 percent tariff rate with no additional stacked duties was 'particularly important' for Irish dairy products such as butter. 'While the simplification of the new tariff structure, as set out in the deal, will make it easier for the sector to manage, we remain concerned about the broader implications of any tariff border on the island of Ireland,' he said. Conor Mulvihill 'The dairy industry operates on an all island basis, with integrated supply chains and cross-border trade in raw milk, ingredients, and finished products. 'Any divergence in tariff treatment between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland could introduce complexity, cost, and uncertainty for processors and farmers alike.' Deloitte Ireland chief economist Kate English said the EU 'was wise to pick their battles and to choose certainty'. 'Remember, this 15 per cent is not on top of existing custom duties – a good example we saw this weekend was Kerrygold butter, which is already subject to a 16 per cent custom duty, so will see little difference from yesterday's decision.' Daniel Mulhall, who served as Ireland's ambassador to the United States from 2017 until 2022, posted on X that the deal 'does not look like a great outcome for the EU'. Irish Ambassador to the US Daniel Mulhall speaking at the 2019 Conference In response to his post, former taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the deal will mean 'fewer EU exports to the US and higher prices for Americans'. He added: 'The only thing it's better than is no deal at all and that's only if it sticks.' Paul Sweetman, chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, said a 15 per cent tariff level is 'not an optimum trade environment' and will be a 'significant burden' to businesses already managing a 10 per cent tariff. 'However, the agreement does bring a new stability and allows business decisions to be made with greater certainty,' he added. Meanwhile, European governments and companies reacted with both relief and concern to the trade deal, acknowledging what was seen as an unbalanced deal but one that avoided a deeper trade war. France prime minister François Bayrou said Europe had submitted to the US on a 'dark day' for the union. 'It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, gathered to affirm their values and defend their interests, resolves to submission,' Mr Bayrou posted on X. German chancellor Friedrich Merz rapidly hailed the deal, saying it avoided 'needless escalation in transatlantic trade relations'. German exporters were less enthusiastic. The powerful BDI federation of industrial groups said the accord would have 'considerable negative repercussions', while the country's VCI chemical trade association said the accord left rates 'too high'. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also expressed support for the agreement, calling it 'sustainable.' Market reaction European shares advanced to a four-month high on Monday, led by gains in pharma and semiconductor stocks. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index rose 0.7 per cent. Most regional bourses were also in the green, with Germany's blue-chip Dax rising 0.6 per cent and France's Cac 40 gaining 0.8 per cent. UK's FTSE 100 added 0.1 per cent. Euro area government bond yields edged down on Monday, while investors assessed their bets on European Central Bank monetary easing. Markets saw an additional 25-basis-point rate cut as likely, but pushed back the timing, assigning a 65 per cent probability for the move by December and an 85 per cent chance by March 2026.
Irish Times
21 hours ago
- Irish Times
How the EU succumbed to Trump's tariff steamroller
The path to the EU's capitulation to Donald Trump's trade blitz was set on April 10th. The sweeping 'liberation day' tariffs that the US president had inflicted on most of the world earlier that month had sent financial markets into a tailspin as investors dumped US assets over recession fears. With the sell-off intensifying, Trump blinked and on April 9th dropped the tariffs to 10 per cent. But Brussels blinked too. On April 10th it suspended its retaliatory tariffs and accepted the US offer of talks with a knife at its throat: 10 per cent tariffs on most of its trade, along with higher levies on steel, aluminium and vehicles. Rather than join Canada and China with instant retaliation and inflict pain on US consumers and businesses, the EU – hamstrung by divergent views among its member states – chose to take the pain in the hope of securing a better deal. READ MORE Under the framework deal struck by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Trump at his Turnberry golf resort on Sunday, the EU has swallowed a broad-based 'baseline' US tariff of 15 per cent, including crucially for cars, but not for steel, which will be subject to a quota system. Relief among policymakers about avoiding an immediate transatlantic trade war was tinged with regret: could the EU, the world's largest trading bloc and supposedly an economic heavyweight, have extracted better terms had it not pulled its punches early on? 'He's the bully in the schoolyard and we didn't join others in standing up to him,' said one diplomat. 'Those who don't hang together get hanged separately.' Georg Riekeles, a former commission official who helped negotiate the UK's exit from the bloc, said the EU's most recent threat to apply €93 billion of retaliatory tariffs against US goods came far too late. 'With the benefit of hindsight, the EU would have been better off answering the US vigorously in April in a one-two combo with China's retaliation against the US tariff hikes, which left markets and Trump reeling,' said Riekeles, now at the European Policy Centre think-tank. Trump views the EU as a parasite, feeding off the lucrative US market while closing its own through regulation and standards. The US president has said the union was 'formed to screw the US' and 'nastier than China'. The EU's response to his return to power in January was flat-footed. Months of planning beforehand by a dedicated team, which included senior trade officials led by another Brexit talks veteran Sabine Weyand and von der Leyen's trade adviser Tomas Baert, went up in smoke. They had drawn up a three-point plan modelled on the approach taken in Trump's first term: offer to reduce the near €200 billion goods trade deficit by buying more liquefied natural gas, weapons and agricultural products. Second, offer mutual tariff reductions on each other's goods. If that failed, they would prepare retaliation and rely on a market response to a possible trade war, or increasing inflation in the US, to force Trump to back down. But Trump moved faster than expected and by March had levied 25 per cent tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars. At a meeting in Luxembourg that month, many trade ministers were on the war path. Germany, France and a few others pushed for the commission to consult on using its new 'trade bazooka', the anti-coercion instrument. Designed after Trump's first term to counter trade policy being used to pressure governments over other matters, it would allow Brussels to bar US companies from public tenders, revoke intellectual property protection and restrict imports and exports. However, it was not clear a majority of member states agreed with the threatening move, diplomats said. Weyand told EU ambassadors, who met at least weekly to discuss progress, to show 'strategic patience'. When the UK struck a trade deal with Washington in May, accepting Trump's 10 per cent baseline tariff, it encouraged those EU member states seeking a settlement, especially Berlin. Meanwhile, a severe tit-for-tat escalation between the US and China ended in partial détente, easing investor fears of global trade turmoil. Stock markets reached record highs, despite the large tariff increases and continued uncertainty unleashed by Trump. Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni and German chancellor Friedrich Merz for months held on to the EU's early offer to drop all industrial tariffs if the US did the same, even though Washington had long made clear it wanted unilateral concessions. Berlin was preoccupied with obtaining a complicated 'offset' scheme to provide tariff relief for European – in practice German – car companies that manufactured and exported from the US. While EU technocrats were boxing under Queensberry rules, Trump was in a New York street fight. Maroš Šefčovič, the EU's avuncular trade commissioner, was dispatched to Washington seven times to propose areas of agreement, deliver homilies on the importance of the transatlantic relationship and promote Germany's car offset scheme. In total, Šefčovič held more than 100 hours of frustrating talks with his US counterparts. A deal for a permanent 10 per cent 'reciprocal' tariff, hatched in July with US trade representative Jamieson Greer and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, was flatly rejected by Trump, who instead threatened to raise levies on the EU to 30 per cent, rather than 20 per cent, from August. And his threats had worked before. The retaliatory package the EU paused in April had been reduced from €26 billion to €21 billion after lobbying by France, Ireland and Italy to ensure bourbon was removed from the list, after Trump threatened to hit European distillers in return. If everything member states requested had been removed, only €9 billion of goods would have been left on the list, officials told the Financial Times. Over the months of talks, Šefčovič's phone rang regularly with ministers urging caution. Minister for Trade Simon Harris was a frequent caller. He wanted to save Ireland's pharmaceutical, spirits and beef industry from any US counterpunch and let the world – not least the Americans – know with frequent social media posts. Business leaders also called loudly for restraint, preferring to accept a cut to profit margins than risk punitive tariffs that would hit sales. A second package of retaliatory tariffs on the US was also cut to €72 billion before finally being approved on July 24th to be used if talks collapsed, bringing the total to €93 billion. The months-long uncertainty over the direction of negotiations has also exposed divisions inside the commission itself. Weyand, the steely expert whose hardball approach to Brexit often outfoxed her UK counterparts, has consistently argued for a stronger stance towards Trump and the use of the EU's retaliation tools, in opposition to the more dovish von der Leyen, multiple diplomats and officials told the FT. The French government, notwithstanding its attempts to shield French business from retaliation, has also repeatedly called for a more muscular commission approach to Trump's tariffs. But the commission president and her close aides argued that the potential damage from additional Trump measures – including threats to impose specific tariffs on critical sectors such as EU pharmaceuticals – meant the risk of a spiralling trade war was too great. There was also concern that a more confrontational stance towards Washington could spill over into other areas. Europe's dependency on America's security guarantee was a further argument against trade confrontation, especially for the bloc's eastern and northern members. Fears that Trump would cut off weapons supplies to Ukraine, pull troops out of Europe or even quit Nato overshadowed the talks, diplomats said. A further priority for the commission president was to preserve the EU's right to regulate. The US tech industry has pushed hard for Trump to pressure the EU to weaken laws regulating online speech and data management. They also opposed national digital taxes. So far von der Leyen has refused to compromise on those issues. 'Some in the commission's trade directorate viewed this as a classical trade dispute and were pushing for retaliation, but von der Leyen had to consider the bigger picture which drove her caution and risk aversion,' said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe managing director at Eurasia Group, the risk consultancy. After Trump rebuffed the deal hatched by his own officials, the commission's negotiating team concluded they had no option but to accept a US tariff of 15 per cent. They pitched the number to member state ambassadors this week. Officials will try to present it as a status quo deal, since the 15 per cent theoretically includes the pre-existing average US tariff of 4.8 per cent. In fact, on a trade weighted basis, the pre-existing US tariff on imports from the EU was only 1.6 per cent. There is no hiding the fact the EU was rolled over by the Trump juggernaut, said one ambassador. 'Trump worked out exactly where our pain threshold is.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
