European leaders struck a slightly more hopeful tone on trade negotiations on Friday, suggesting that talks with the White House continued even as Europe makes preparations to hit back should they fail.
“I think I had good conversations with President Trump, on the phone and at the funeral of the pope,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said at a news conference in Brussels. “But for me, it’s important that if I go to the White House, I want to have a package that we can discuss.”
The European Commission is the executive arm of the 27-nation European Union, and it takes responsibility on trade policy. Officials have been struggling for months to make progress with their American counterparts, and Ms. von der Leyen until recently had little interaction with President Trump. But the two spoke on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome in late April, and Mr. Trump yesterday called Ms. von der Leyen “so fantastic.”
Asked about that comment, Ms. von der Leyen laughed and said, “I like compliments, in general.” She added that she wanted to make progress in negotiations — and implied that work on that was underway.
“I want to have a solution that we both can agree on,” she added. “That is the work we’re doing right now.”
Friedrich Merz, the new German chancellor, was speaking alongside Ms. von der Leyen at the news conference. He echoed her stance that the European Union — in which Germany is the largest economy — should keep engaging with its American counterparts toward a deal.
“We need to find negotiated solutions with the U.S. government,” Mr. Merz said. “When I do go to Washington, it’s not planned yet, but we will be planning it very shortly, and I will definitely coordinate with the European Commission to make sure that we all sing from the same hymn sheet.”
Mr. Merz said that it was important for Europe to have a “common position” on trade, and that Germany “fully supports” the decisions that Brussels has taken so far.
The European Union announced just on Thursday that it was preparing a program of retaliation should trade talks fail. It announced plans for both a World Trade Organization dispute and counter-tariffs that could hit some 95 billion euros ($107 billion) of goods, from beef to Boeing airplane parts.
But officials remain clear that they would prefer to make a deal — and the prospect of one seems to be increasing, if still far from assured.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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