Trump, EU's von der Leyen meet to clinch trade deal, rating chances 50-50
U.S. and EU negotiators huddled in final talks on tariffs facing crucial sectors like cars, steel, aluminium and pharmaceuticals before the meeting began at Trump's golf course in Turnberry, western Scotland.
Trump, who had earlier played a round with his son, told reporters as he met von der Leyen that he wanted to correct a trading arrangement he said was "very unfair to the United States" and repeated his comments from Friday that the chances of a U.S-EU deal were 50-50, a view echoed by von der Leyen.
"We have three or four sticking points I'd rather not get into. The main sticking point is fairness," he said insisting the EU had to open up to American products.
Von der Leyen acknowledged there was a need for "rebalancing" EU-U.S. trade.
"We have a surplus, the United States has a deficit and we have to rebalance it... we will make it more sustainable," she said.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who flew to Scotland on Saturday, told "Fox News Sunday" that the EU needed to open its markets for more U.S. exports to convince Trump to reduce a threatened 30% tariff rate that is due to kick in on August 1.
"The question is, do they offer President Trump a good enough deal that is worth it for him to step off of the 30% tariffs that he set," Lutnick said, adding that the EU clearly wanted - and needed - to reach an agreement.
A separate U.S. administration official was upbeat that a deal was possible. "We're cautiously optimistic that there will be a deal reached," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But it's not over till it's over."
The EU deal would be a huge prize, given that the U.S. and EU are each other's largest trading partners by far and account for a third of global trade in goods and services.
Ambassadors of EU governments, on a weekend trip to Greenland organised by the Danish presidency of the EU, held a teleconference with EU Commission officials on Sunday to agree on the amount of leeway von der Leyen would have.
In case there is no deal and the U.S. imposes 30% tariffs from August 1, the EU has prepared counter-tariffs on 93 billion euros ($109 billion) of U.S. goods.
EU diplomats have said a deal would likely include a broad 15% tariff on EU goods imported into the U.S., mirroring the U.S.-Japan trade deal, along with a 50% tariff on European steel and aluminium for which there could be export quotas.
EU officials are hopeful that a 15% baseline tariff would also apply to cars, replacing the current 27.5% auto tariff.
Some expect the 27-nation bloc may be able to secure exemptions from the 15% baseline tariff for its aerospace industry and for spirits, though probably not for wine.
The EU could also pledge to buy more liquefied natural gas from the U.S., a long-standing offer, and boost investment in the United States.
Trump told reporters there was "not a lot" of wiggle room on the 50% tariffs that the U.S. has on steel and aluminium imports, adding, "because if I do it for one, I have to do it for all."
The U.S. president, in Scotland for a few days of golfing and bilateral meetings, said a deal with the EU should draw to a close discussions on tariffs, but also said pharmaceuticals, for which the United States is looking into new tariffs, would not be part of a deal.
The EU now faces U.S. tariffs on more than 70% of its exports, with 50% on steel and aluminium, an extra 25% on cars and car parts on top of the existing 2.5% and a 10% levy on most other EU goods. EU officials have said a "no-deal" tariff rate of 30% would wipe out whole chunks of transatlantic commerce.
A 15% tariff on most EU goods would remove uncertainty but would be seen by many in Europe as a poor outcome compared to the initial European ambition of a zero-for-zero tariff deal on all industrial goods.
Seeking to learn from Japan, which secured a 15% baseline tariff with the U.S. in a deal almost a week ago, EU negotiators spoke to their Japanese counterparts in preparation for Sunday's meeting.
For Trump, aiming to reorder the global economy and reduce decades-old U.S. trade deficits, a deal with the EU would be the biggest trade agreement, surpassing the $550 billion deal with Japan.
So far, he has reeled in agreements with Britain, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam, although his administration has failed to deliver on a promise of "90 deals in 90 days."
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BBC News
26 minutes ago
- BBC News
EU and US agree trade deal, with 15% tariffs for European exports to America
The United States and European Union have reached a trade deal, ending a months-long standoff between two of the world's key economic make-or-break negotiations between President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen in Scotland, the pair agreed on a blanket US tariff on all EU goods of 15%. That is half the 30% import tax rate Trump had threatened to implement starting on Friday. Trump said the 27-member bloc would open its markets to US exporters with zero per cent tariffs on certain der Leyen also hailed the deal, saying it would bring stability for both allies, who together account for almost a third of global trade. Trump has threatened tariffs against major US trade partners in a bid to reorder the global economy and trim the American trade well as the EU, he has also struck tariff agreements with the UK, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam, although he has not achieved his goal of "90 deals in 90 days".Sunday's deal was announced after private talks between Trump and Von der Leyen at his Turnberry golf course in South - who is on a five-day visit to Scotland - said following a brief meeting with the European Commission president: "We have reached a deal. It's a good deal for everybody.""It's going to bring us closer together," he der Leyen also hailed it as a "huge deal", after "tough negotiations".Under the agreement, Trump said the EU would boost its investment in the US by $600bn (£446bn), purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American military equipment and spend $750bn on investment in American liquified natural gas, oil and nuclear fuels would, Von der Leyen said, help reduce European reliance on Russian power sources."I want to thank President Trump personally for his personal commitment and his leadership to achieve this breakthrough," she said."He is a tough negotiator, but he is also a dealmaker."The US president also said a 50% tariff he has implemented on steel and aluminium globally would stay in sides can paint this agreement as something of a the EU, the tariffs could have been worse: it is not as good as the UK's 10% tariff rate, but is the same as the 15% rate that Japan the US it equates to the expectation of roughly $90bn of tariff revenue into government coffers – based on last year's trade figures, plus there's hundreds of billions of dollars of investment now due to come into the US. How are trade deals actually negotiated?They made America's clothing. Now they are getting punished for itIn pictures: President Trump's private visit to Scotland Trade in goods between the EU and US totalled about $975.9bn last year. Last year the US imported about $606bn in goods from the EU and exported around $ imbalance, or trade deficit, is a sticking point for Trump. He says trade relationships like this mean the US is "losing".If he had followed through on tariffs against Europe, import taxes would have been levied on products from Spanish pharmaceuticals to Italian leather, German electronics and French EU had said it was prepared to retaliate with tariffs on US goods including car parts, Boeing planes and Prime Minister Keir Starmer plans his own meeting with Trump at Turnberry on will be in Aberdeen on Tuesday, where his family has another golf course and is opening a third next president and his sons plan to help cut the ribbon on the new fairway.
Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
Out-gunned Europe accepts least-worst US trade deal
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Daily Mail
26 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
STEPHEN DAISLEY: The out-of-touch political dreamers who've now been handed a rude awakening by reality
Ten years and a few months ago, I was dispatched to Paisley to try to interview Mhairi Black. I say 'try to' because everywhere we went someone would interrupt to tell the 20 year-old they were voting for her. It's not easy grilling a candidate on currency options for an independent Scotland when every few minutes a passing stranger suddenly downs their Tesco bags and asks for a selfie. This was the eve of the 2015 general election and the SNP was poised to sweep Labour from its west-central heartlands. Nicola Sturgeon was selling out the Hydro. Black was about to become the youngest MP since the Great Reform Act. I still had hair. It was another Scotland. A decade on, Black says she's done with the SNP and is no longer a member. She pinpoints 'capitulation on LGBT rights, trans rights in particular' as her reason for leaving, though adds: 'I thought the party could be doing better about Palestine as well'. Much as I don't share Black's views on gender or Gaza – or a great deal else, for that matter – I respect them. They're sincerely held. If you're going to hate anyone in politics, don't hate the ones who disagree with you on principle, hate the ones prepared to agree with you on any principle just to get ahead. Unfortunately her principles are far removed from those of the median voter, who remains baffled by the notion that someone can 'identify' into a different sex and even more baffled as to how this became a priority for politicians across the land. Many feel strongly about the deaths in Gaza but for most voters it is nowhere near the top of their concerns, which are dominated by their family, then their social circles, then their neighbourhood, then their country. Idealists who make a virtue of empathising more with those on the other side of the world get very angry about this. They even invented a term for it, 'hierarchy of death', which seems superfluous when we already had a term for it: human nature. For the SNP to have clung onto Black's membership subs, it would have had to return to a subject (trans rights) which has caused it no end of internal division and political misery, and adopt an even more strident stance on Israel's military response to the Palestinians' October 7 invasion and murder, rape and abduction of its citizens. The SNP is a political party, not a moral philosophy seminar. It exists to win elections and, in theory, achieve Scottish independence. What votes would it win by taking Black's advice? What votes is it at risk of losing by not? The former Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP comes close to identifying the problem herself, when she says: 'If anything, I'm probably a bit more Left-wing than I have been. I don't think I have changed all that much. I feel like the party needs to change a lot more.' The SNP does have to change, but not in the direction Black wants. The Nationalists and most other parties have spent the past decade or so breenging off on a tangent about trans rights, systemic racism, Donald Trump and the rest. A correction was long overdue. This agenda lacked popular consent and stoked resentment among both those who opposed it fiercely and those who protested over so much time and effort being frittered away. The Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland has helped immeasurably. Party leaders and policy-makers were able to point to the ruling and pass responsibility onto the justices. They weren't backsliding, the court was clarifying the law. For John Swinney, this has been a blessed opportunity to ditch positions he went along with at the time, I've no doubt against his better judgment, but which he knows have gravely damaged his party's standing with the public. A man with more gumption would have stood up and said something when it mattered, but if Swinney isn't much of a leader – and he certainly isn't – nor is he alone in that category. During the initial consultation stage for reforming the Gender Recognition Act, a senior politician in one party admitted to me that they didn't understand the issue, or why it was a priority, but they'd be voting for it because they had been told to. Politics is the trade of dreamers and cynics and while Mhairi Black might be wrong about everything at least she's sincere about it. She isn't the only dreamer to be rudely awakened lately by political reality. Maggie Chapman has found herself dumped as the Greens' lead candidate in North East Scotland, replaced by Guy Ingerson, ex oil-and-gas worker turned Net Zero enthusiast. According to a pet theory of mine, that makes it unlikely that Chapman will be re-elected next May. The theory: a person's likelihood to vote for the Scottish Greens correlates with their proximity to a Pret A Manger. Edinburgh and Glasgow, home to 11 and six branches of the posh sandwich chain respectively, just so happen to be the Greens' best and second-best performing areas on the regional lists. Aberdeen, with just two, lags far behind in Green support. Whether or not my theory holds water (or overpriced coffee), Chapman's Holyrood career appears to be over after years of headline-grabbing pronouncements. Her principles also deserve respect. Not because they're sincerely held but because we should remain open to ideas from other planets. When the landmark ruling was handed down in For Women Scotland, Chapman attended a rally to denounce the 'bigotry, prejudice and hatred coming from the Supreme Court'. She once told an interviewer that allowing eight year olds to change their legal sex was something that 'in principle we should be exploring'. Following the October 7 attack on Israel, she shared a tweet saying the murderous rampage was not terrorism but 'decolonisation'. Yes, her views are deranged, but the more pertinent question is how these came to be the views of someone elected to make sure Scots can see a doctor, find a good school for their children, and not get mugged at knifepoint. The answer is that ideologues like Chapman are not interested in all that boring, quotidian stuff that fixates middle-class taxpayers. Simply ghastly people, those bourgeois types, with their petrol-guzzling cars, their authoritarian demands for more police on the streets, and their grasping fixation with ambition and acquisition. Don't they know there are more important issues in the world? There are far too many in Holyrood or keen to get there who think like this. For them, life is just one long university debating society match, in which enlightened elites like them exchange barbs and bon mots over affairs of state. The little people might fret about bills and savings and leaving an inheritance for their children, but they are above such vulgar materialism. They are here to change the world, you know. In my observation, those most keen to change the world tend to have the least experience of it. They make terrible politicians because they quickly find out the world doesn't work the way they want and they resent the voters for that. If the voters set the agenda in politics, Mhairi Black and Maggie Chapman wouldn't be the only ones in our insular, self-righteous governing class that would be stampeding for the exit. Democracy is still the most radical idea of all. Maybe one day we'll give it a try.
