The EU and the United States are already negotiating tariffs amid Trump's contradictions.

Washington / BrusselsThe European Union continues to try to rebuild the trade bridges that US President Donald Trump has burned amidst contradictory messages. On Monday morning, White House economic adviser Kevin Hasset assured that "progress" is being made with the Europeans after "many discussions." At midday, however, Trump once again attacked the EU27. "The European Union was formed to harm the United States and deceive in trade," the US president said during a press conference. his meeting with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.

Trump has once again reiterated his hostility toward the EU while the European Commission's Trade Commissioner, Maros Sefcovic, met with his American counterparts, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer, the White House representative for international trade. "We're losing out on this [referring to NATO], and we're losing out on trade. The European Union should be at the table, but they're taking advantage of it a lot," the US president declared during the meeting with Bukele.

In this regard, he again mentioned the US trade deficit (the difference between exports and imports) with the EU: "They don't buy our food products. They don't buy our cars. We do. We have millions of their cars: BMWs, Volkswagens, Mercedes-Benz, many of them." from the Oval Office, referring to the automotive sector, one of the sectors most frequently used by the US president as an example of the trade imbalances with Europe and the alleged mistreatment the US receives from its allies on the Old Continent. The criticism of Europe and NATO, in fact, coincides with the announcement of the withdrawal of 10,000 US soldiers from Poland's southern border with Ukraine.

In fact, in relation to the automotive sector, European car brands, especially German ones—Germany is the main automotive exporter in the EU and has this industry as one of its industrial pillars—are one of the US president's greatest fixations, which he has made a repeated target of his attacks. The magnate believes they constitute unfair competition for cars made by American automakers, which have a large part of their assembly lines in Mexico. He ignores, however, that American companies, such as Ford, are well-established in the European market and have several factories spread across several EU countries (in Ford's case), one of them a Ford factory. However, despite the criticism of European cars, Trump hinted that he would relax the general 25% tariffs already in place on car imports.

Referring to the automotive sector, Hasset had told Fox television hours earlier that the outcome of the negotiations with the Europeans "will be very good for American workers, especially for American autoworkers."

Sefcovic's third trip to the US.

Sefcovic's trip to Washington is his third since Trump began threatening a tariff war. The last time the European Trade Representative visited the US was to try to secure some kind of exception or truce for Europe, before Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs. A 10% tariff on European imports is now being applied, after Trump reversed course last week and declared a 90-day partial truce for all countries except China. This is a partial truce because instead of applying the originally announced tariffs—the EU was due 20%—he reduced them to a global 10% until July.

This Monday, the European Commission formally approved the 90-day postponement of the countermeasures it had already agreed upon in response to Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum products imported from the EU. This is a gesture intended to make it clear to Washington that Brussels has no desire to contribute to an escalation of customs duties and is willing to negotiate to find an agreed solution to the trade war. "The EU remains constructive and is ready to reach a fair agreement, including reciprocity through our 0-for-0 tariff offer on industrial goods," Sefcovic said in a message on the social network X (formerly Twitter) after the meeting.

However, the European Commission also warned in a statement that the countermeasures it had already applied could be reactivated at any time if negotiations with the US fail. In this sense, after the meeting with Lutnick and Greer, the European Commissioner for Trade insisted that avoiding an escalation of tariffs "will require a significant joint effort by both parties."

Now, in keeping with its trademark, on Sunday the Trump administration once again issued new fine print in the trade war with the rest of the world and announced that it would apply a exception for the smartphones and imported computers, including those from China, one of the world's leading producers and the country where major US technology companies such as Apple and Microsoft manufacture their products. The notice was published by the US Customs Agency. However, this Monday, the president announced that he would impose tariffs on chips and semiconductors, as well as pharmaceutical products, in the near future, but not immediately.