A fresh flashpoint has emerged in transatlantic trade negotiations, after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to the European Union: slash all levies on American goods to zero by July 4, or face sharply increased tariffs on EU exports entering the United States.
The ultimatum came following a phone conversation between Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In a post on social media, Trump claimed the EU had already committed to the zero-tariff plan as part of a landmark bilateral trade agreement reached between the two leaders last July. He wrote that he granted von der Leyen an extension until the U.S. Independence Day – the nation’s 250th birthday – warning that failure to meet the demand would trigger immediate, far higher tariffs than currently in place.
Von der Leyen offered a more measured assessment in her own post on the social platform X, acknowledging that negotiators have made solid progress toward tariff reduction ahead of Trump’s deadline. She emphasized that both sides remain fully dedicated to implementing the framework agreement the two leaders signed last year.
The path to finalizing the deal has hit a major snag this week, however. A round of negotiations between EU lawmakers and representatives of the bloc’s 27 member states concluded Wednesday without a consensus on how to move forward with enactment.
The original deal, struck after Trump played a round of golf at his Turnberry luxury resort in Scotland, rolled back a planned 30% Trump tariff on European goods, settling on a permanent 15% levy for EU exports to the U.S. The pact secured conditional backing from the European Parliament back in March, when a majority of lawmakers voted in favor of implementing legislation. But legislators attached critical safeguards to their approval, tying any commitment to eliminate tariffs on U.S. goods to one key demand: the U.S. must permanently exempt European-made steel and aluminum from Trump’s 50% global tariff on those metals.
Even with parliamentary approval in hand, the deal still requires formal sign-off from all 27 EU national governments, a hurdle that has divided negotiators. Ahead of Trump’s latest social media announcement, Bernd Lange, the European Parliament’s lead negotiator on the file, noted Thursday that talks were moving forward but still had ground to cover. “We remain more committed than ever to advance and defend Parliament’s mandate so as to provide additional guarantees that will benefit citizens and companies in both the EU and the US,” Lange said in a statement. Negotiators have scheduled their next round of talks for May 19 in Strasbourg.
This is not the first time Trump has pressed the EU to speed up compliance. Last week, he took to his Truth Social platform to accuse the bloc of failing to honor the terms of the already agreed deal, announcing he would raise tariffs on EU-produced trucks and cars to 25%. The latest ultimatum raises the stakes considerably, putting transatlantic trade relations on a countdown to a potential new trade war just over a month from now.