Washington is again ratcheting up the pressure on the European Union with new tariff threats. Brussels’ response is strikingly different from a year ago: Don’t retaliate, don’t put on a show for Donald Trump, and don’t let him dictate the timetable.
Trump’s recent threat to “immediately initiate” a trade investigation over the European Commission’s $1 billion fine against Google came on top of new tariffs on the EU and dozens of other trading partners, and continuing pressure from Washington over drug pricing.
But rather than sounding alarms and scrambling to respond to this new phase of Trump’s global trade war, the EU has shown public restraint — a reaction that suggests that the 27-member bloc has become less susceptible to Trump’s pressure tactics.
This year, European capitals saw their united rejection of Trump’s Greenland ambitions fail to trigger a wider transatlantic rupture. His most sweeping tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court, and their successors have drawn legal challenges. Now, with a chance that Trump’s grip on Washington loosens in the November midterm elections, Europeans are happy to play for time.
“It is a strategy of buying time through dialogue,” Bernd Lange, a German member of the European Parliament and chair of its Committee on International Trade, said in an interview. “The Commission’s approach is to move away from anything that could be seen as legally binding and focus instead on dialogue forums, consultation and areas where cooperation is possible.”
Last year, Brussels repeatedly bristled at Trump’s tariff threats, which at times reached as high as 50 percent, before agreeing to a trade truce at the U.S. president’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. After months of delays that tested Washington’s patience, the EU fulfilled its side of the bargain by passing legislation in June to allow U.S. industrial and some agricultural goods to enter the bloc duty-free.
A USTR official, granted anonymity to share the administration’s thinking, credited the EU for implementing “key commitments,” in the Turnberry deal, “such as massive tariff reductions for U.S. exports, and has made concrete commitments on a number of other burdensome regulatory matters.”
“Any technical talks will be about implementing the remaining commitments, and the U.S. side anticipates this will move at pace,” the official added.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The EU law, however, also includes guardrails should Trump threaten the bloc again.
It didn’t take long for him to do so.
While the 10 percent tariff the U.S. government rolled out July 23 does not violate the Turnberry agreement, which caps U.S. duties on most EU goods at 15 percent, Trump’s threats to investigate Europe’s digital restrictions in the wake of the Google fine would likely do so. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has yet to launch an official investigation, but the official there confirmed to POLITICO that the agency expected “to initiate the investigation soon”. That could allow the White House to layer on more tariffs on EU imports.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is also conducting a separate trade investigation into Germany’s pharmaceutical pricing and has suggested he could launch similar reviews of other European countries’ drug pricing practices as well.
Those investigations, however, will take months to resolve, if not longer.
“The second phase of the trade war touches a nerve in Europe: sovereignty. Whether it concerns taxation, health care systems or competition policy, these are areas the EU sees as core to its autonomy,” said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, a former International Monetary Fund and German government official who now heads Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.
“At the same time, Trump no longer appears as politically untouchable as he did at the start of his presidency. Weakening poll numbers ahead of the midterms, controversy over the Iran war and legal setbacks in the U.S. Supreme Court have exposed vulnerabilities,” Zettelmeyer said.
In the meantime, EU officials are keeping channels to Washington open. The thinking in Brussels is that every public confrontation plays to Trump’s preferred negotiating style, whereas slower legal and technical processes give the EU more room to manage disputes on its own terms.
Nor is German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a rush to offer concessions to the Trump administration on drug pricing, according to a European official familiar with the issue who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks. Berlin expects the U.S. trade investigation to take at least a year, the person noted.
Brussels is in close touch with Berlin on the probe, which it believes could be a blueprint for other possible U.S. trade investigations into France and Italy’s pharmaceutical policies. Ditte Juul Jørgensen, head of the Commission’s trade department, recently met with German officials in Berlin to focus on a way forward on drug pricing.
The Commission has adopted a similar strategy on transatlantic disagreements on digital policy.
While the Trump administration has pressed for broader talks, including on the enforcement of the EU’s competition rules governing Big Tech platforms, Brussels has taken pains to keep the discussions at a technical level.
In early July, a group of officials from the European Commission’s trade and tech departments headed to Washington for what a Commission spokesperson described as “a dialogue on the dialogue.”
A senior Commission official said the meeting was about seeing where the two sides could “partner up,” with Brussels looking at holding a “high-level” meeting with Washington in the fall and a series of technical rounds in between.
“From the EU’s perspective, both sort of genetically as an organization and tactically, they would be happy if as many of the discussions as possible moved to the technical level in dialogue committees rather than have it be, like, Donald Trump and somebody going at it on Twitter or in competing press statements,” said Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former trade diplomat for the Australian government and the founder of ExplainTrade, an outlet based in Geneva.
The Commission responded with characteristic restraint after Trump threatened retaliation over the latest Google fine. After the U.S. president’s Truth Social post, Brussels emphasized it would seek “technical-level contact” between the EU and the U.S., said deputy chief spokesperson Olof Gill. A meeting at a higher, political level hasn’t yet been confirmed.
However, several people familiar with the matter confirmed they were expecting a reaction from the U.S., possibly in the form of a new 301 investigation.
“I have not heard anything yet on timing for the launch or scope of the Section 301 investigation,” said a U.S. tech industry representative, who was granted anonymity to discuss the conversations with administration officials. “But I believe this has been in the works for some time as a means of leverage in U.S. negotiations with the EU.”
Europe’s strategy depends on shifting disputes out of Trump’s preferred arena of public confrontation. But officials acknowledge that this bet rests on one unpredictable factor: Trump himself.
“We cannot let our guard down,” another Commission official said. “Trump may change course at any moment. His focus is on how markets react to his policies, not on how the EU behaves.”
Stefanie Bolzen reported from Washington and Camille Gijs reported from Brussels. Oliver Ward contributed to this report.