President Trump’s administration once promised 90 deals in 90 days. When it comes to the European Union, it may be more of a framework.
President Trump’s trade negotiators and their European Union counterparts are working frantically to strike a deal before July 9. But what emerges within the next few days — in the best case — could shape up to be more of a rough outline than a full-fledged agreement.
The 27-nation bloc, which is the United States’ largest trading partner when both goods and services are taken into account, has also been one of the Trump administration’s toughest sparring partners over the past four months.
When Mr. Trump began to slap both sector-specific and across-the-board tariffs on America’s trading partners earlier this year, he had clear goals in mind for the European Union, which he said was formed to “screw” the United States.
He wanted Europeans to stop policing American technology companies so aggressively. He wanted Europe’s nations to change their system of value added taxes. He wanted them to buy more American cars, and he wanted them to shrink their trade imbalance in goods, which stood at about $236 billion in 2024, per U.S. statistics.
But the Europe Union pushed back hard. It has made it clear that it cannot change its taxation system, and that it would not change its digital services laws. It offered to buy more American industrial goods, but initially asked for the United States to drop tariffs on manufactured products in return. And it threatened, repeatedly, to retaliate by imposing tariffs on products ranging from pajamas to soybeans.
After months of back-and-forth that has included public barbs and many hours of negotiation, what is likely to emerge over the next two weeks is a deal that does not satisfy either side’s stated goals.
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