The European Union’s executive arm requested “full clarity” from the United States and asked its trade partner to fulfill its commitments after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down some of President Donald Trump’s most sweeping tariffs.
Trump has lashed out at the court decision and said on Saturday that he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from 10% he had announced a day earlier.
The European Commission said the current situation is not conducive to delivering “fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial” trans-Atlantic trade and investment, as agreed to by both sides and spelled out in the EU-U.S. Joint Statement of August 2025.
American and EU officials sealed a trade deal last year that imposes a 15% import tax on 70% of European goods exported to the United States. The European Commission handles trade for the 27 EU member countries.
A top EU lawmaker said on Sunday he will propose to the European Parliament negotiating team to put the ratifying process of the deal on pause.
“Pure tariff chaos on the part of the U.S. administration,” Bernd Lange, the chair of Parliament’s international trade committee, wrote on social media. “No one can make sense of it anymore — only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other U.S. trading partners.”
The value of EU-U.S. trade in goods and services amounted to 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in 2024, or an average of 4.6 billion euros a day, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.
“A deal is a deal,” the European Commission said. “As the United States’ largest trading partner, the EU expects the U.S. to honor its commitments set out in the Joint Statement — just as the EU stands by its commitments. EU products must continue to benefit from the most competitive treatment, with no increases in tariffs beyond the clear and all-inclusive ceiling previously agreed.”
Europe’s biggest exports to the U.S. are pharmaceuticals, cars, aircraft, chemicals, medical instruments, and wine and spirits. Among the biggest U.S. exports to the bloc are professional and scientific services like payment systems and cloud infrastructure, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, aerospace products and cars.
“When applied unpredictably, tariffs are inherently disruptive, undermining confidence and stability across global markets and creating further uncertainty across international supply chains,” the commission added.
As primarily a trading bloc, the EU has a powerful tool at its disposal to retaliate — the bloc’s Anti-Coercion Instrument. It includes a raft of measures for blocking or restricting trade and investment from countries found to be putting undue pressure on EU member nations or corporations.
The measures could include curtailing the export and import of goods and services, barring countries or companies from EU public tenders, or limiting foreign direct investment. In its most severe form, it would essentially close off access to the EU’s 450-million customer market and inflict billions of dollars of losses on U.S. companies and the American economy.
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