Trump’s latest tarriffs threat to the EU is his most offensive yet

Donald Trump has a new target for his strong‑man schtick: the European Union – and he’s threatening 50% tariffs because 27 democracies won’t salute one man’s whim.

‘The European Union… has been very difficult to deal with,’ the POTUS wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday. ‘Our discussions with them are going nowhere!’

He then gave a deadline of June 1, which he later pushed back to July 9 to allow more time for negotiations after European leaders said they were ready to respond with their own measures.

Within minutes of the initial announcement, the Nasdaq and S&P slid, and London’s FTSE 100 shuddered before clawing back only a sliver.

To understand why his gambit is doomed, we need to start in the ruins of 1945.

Europe was bombed flat, 70 million dead, and neighbours eyeing each other like bar‑brawl rivals.

From this came an offer from the French in 1950 to pool coal and steel – necessary to make tanks and guns – so thoroughly that a future war would be both unthinkable and materially impossible.

Six nations signed up within a year.

Peace first prosperity second. That is the foundation of the EU: born to ensure the horrors of a world war could never materialise again.

Then came the Common Market, which ensured economic and social progress through the free movement of goods, people, and services. This meant tearing down tariffs, standardising product rules, and letting workers follow jobs across borders. Invest in regions, lift up communities and encourage collaboration.

Hardly surprising, then, that a leader who bristles at a millimetre of constraint despises a project deliberately designed to make unilateralism impossible.

So, of course, Trump doesn’t like the EU – it’s democratic, plural and procedural, which is everything a dressed-up con man finds exasperating.

Intentional as it is, though, that painstaking design does have side effects. Making deals can be slow. Really slow.

Negotiating with 27 separately elected governments under the EU’s banner is not light work; a trade deal with Canada took seven years, and Australia five – the latter not resulting in a deal being met.

But that level of scrutiny is the point. The EU was engineered after 1945 so that no single leader – no matter how vain, vengeful, or short‑tempered – could unilaterally yank the economic lever and send tanks rolling.

Trump’s very issue with the EU is one of its greatest assets.

By contrast, he treats trade like an episode of reality TV: threatens the contestants, waits for screams, and cuts to commercials.

Democratic procedure and distributed power, like the EU’s, is kryptonite to a man who denies he lost an election, strikes deals on a whim and measures success by tweets and followers, not meaningful change.

Mere whispers of a 25% tariff on iPhones sent Apple shares plummeting, pension funds gasped as markets lurched, while Allianz warned over half of American firms will raise prices to cover Trump tariffs.

And Britain? Post‑Brexit, we sit squarely in the blast radius, wedged between the continent we’ve just divorced and the ex‑colonial sweetheart we’re desperate to impress.

Those 50% tariffs on EU exports will slam straight into us.

German gearboxes in Sunderland‑built Nissans, Irish beef shipped through Holyhead, and French medicines stocked by the NHS will all jump in price because they’re stamped with ‘Made in EU’ somewhere along the way.

Westminster politicians spend all day scrabbling around to paint a picture of post‑Brexit Britain as a sovereign, free‑trading nation.

But the reality is that we have a couple of measly deals with the US, Australia, and New Zealand, all of which combined are estimated toaccount for less than 4% of the trade we had with the EU before we cut ourselves off.

Aside from the reputational hurt, Britain risks becoming collateral damage in a brawl where we have no seat at the table and no veto over the rules. But despite the UK’s tragic and chaotic departure, the EU’s original mission is as strong today as it was when it was formed.

The Union remains the world’s most successful and enduring peace project. Nothing the planet has ever seen has done more to unite former enemies after such catastrophic bloodshed.

Trump wheezes that the EU is undemocratic, even as he fumes that 27 parliaments refuse to rubber stamp his demands, but the infuriating consensus-based model is precisely what makes it resilient to the whims of any single autocrat, foreign or domestic.

Sure, it’s messy, bureaucratic and infuriating, but when your baseline is 1914 to 1945, infuriating paperwork and slow-moving bureaucrats beat smouldering cities and 100 million dead every time.

So when Donald Trump snarls that the EU was ‘formed to take advantage of the United States’, he’s turning the history book upside down.

The EU’s origin is not anti‑American, but anti‑war. We didn’t unite to fleece America; we united so we would stop killing each other; America is still trying to catch up. Get there, Donald – then we’ll talk.

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