Countries in the European Union are likely to face a flat, double-digit tariff on all goods as part of the “reciprocal” tariffs President Donald Trump has promised to unveil on April 2.
The final tariff rate is still fluid, according to three diplomats, who were briefed on European trade chief Maroš Šefčovič’s Tuesday meeting with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and were granted anonymity to share details of the private briefing. The tariffs are expected to kick in at midnight on April 3, the people were told.
EU ambassadors to the U.S. were also told there is little they can do to avoid the tariffs going into force, which the Trump administration views as the beginning, not the end, of trade negotiations.
European diplomats expect Trump’s April 2 announcement to focus on what the White House has dubbed reciprocal tariffs. According to two of the diplomats, those duties will take the form of a flat percentage for the EU, calculated based on the trade barriers the bloc imposes on U.S. exports, including tariffs on goods and other non-tariff barriers. And those two diplomats suggested the tariff rate applied to the EU could be as high as 20 or 25 percent.
All of the tariffs would be additive, meaning they would come on top of tariffs levied on specific industries like steel and aluminum and the 25 percent tariff Trump has ordered on any country that purchases oil and gas from Venezuela, which includes Spain and the Netherlands.
Trump has also promised separate tariffs on five industries: steel and aluminum, automobiles, lumber, semiconductors and pharmaceutical products. The White House has already imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum and Trump plans to announce his tariff on automobiles Wednesday afternoon.
The tariffs on the other industries could come later in April, as the administration focuses on reciprocal tariffs and the negotiations that ensue, the diplomats were told.
“But it is not sure which of the big ones will be targeted at the EU,” one diplomat said. “Maybe they will give us the honor only with some of the sectors such as automotive.”
Trump has been openly critical of the EU in recent weeks, after the 27 country bloc announced that it would respond to his steel and aluminum tariffs with its own tariffs on about $28 billion in U.S. goods. Trump has said the EU was created to “screw” the U.S. and has criticized their value-added tax, despite insistence from European countries — and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — that it’s evenly applied to sales in member countries and is not a trade barrier.
“I think I’ve been very fair,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “I’ve had, I have them set, but I think I’ve been very fair to countries that have really abused us economically for many, many decades.”