Trump to Impose 25% Tariffs on EU

President Donald Trump said he has decided to hit the European Union with 25% tariffs, saying EU was formed “to screw the United States.”

“We have made a decision and we’ll be announcing it very soon,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday.
Trump said the tariffs would apply to all things but mentioned car imports, specifically.
European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, April 20, 2016.

“They’ve really taken advantage of us,” he said. “They don’t accept our cars. They don’t accept, essentially, our farm products. And we accept everything of them.”

“Let’s be honest. The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States,” Trump said. “That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it.”

The EU’s predecessor organizations were launched in the wake of World War II to ensure peaceful cooperation on the continent. Their gradual economic integration has included the development of a widely shared currency, the Euro, and free movement across many national borders.

Asked about possible retaliatory taxes by the EU, which now consists of 27 member countries, Trump said simply, “They can try, but they can’t.”

Trump has delayed a 25% tariff he was set to impose on imports from Canada and Mexico. Trump said Wednesday that the tariffs would go into effect April 2.

He’s also imposed 10% tariff on Chinese imports. All three countries have vowed retaliatory tariffs. The U.S. goods trade deficit with the European Union was $235.6 billion in 2024, a 13% increase ($26.9 billion) over 2023, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The Tax Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., estimates that the imposed tariffs on China would reduce long-run GDP by 0.1% and the proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico by 0.3%, without taking into account retaliatory taxes by the countries.

Economists say the sudden increase in costs for imported products could reignite inflation, which Trump campaigned on eliminating.

“My view is it would mean a real shock to the American economy,” said Gary Hufbauer, an economist and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Quite a bit of inflation.”

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called Trump’s tariffs “bad policy” in a Feb. 15 op-ed in USA TODAY.

“During the last Trump administration, retaliatory tariffs from trade partners set off a broader trade war that hit wide swaths of American industry, from agriculture to manufacturing to aerospace and motor vehicles to distilled spirits,” he wrote. “Broad-based tariffs could have long-term consequences right in our backyard.”