Trade chaos is forcing America’s allies closer together, and further from the United States. And as that happens, the European Union is trying to position itself at the center of a new global trade map.
The 27-nation bloc learned this weekend that America will subject it to 30 percent tariffs starting Aug. 1. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive branch, responded with a pledge to keep negotiating, and to retaliate if necessary.
But that was not the entire strategy. Europe, like many of the United States’ trading partners, is also looking for more reliable friends.
“Meanwhile, we continue to deepen our global partnerships, firmly anchored in the principles of rules-based international trade,” Ms. von der Leyen said.
She will make good on that starting Sunday. Ms. von der Leyen is scheduled to give a speech alongside Indonesia’s president. Just as Mr. Trump threatens to put hefty tariffs on the Asian nation, the European Union is working to relax trade barriers.
It is a split screen that is becoming typical. On one side, the United States sows uncertainty as it blows up weeks of painstaking negotiations and escalates tariff threats. On the other, the European Union and other American trading partners are forging closer ties, laying the groundwork for a global trading system that revolves less and less around an increasingly fickle United States.
“Free and fair trade drives prosperity, creates jobs and strengthens supply chains,” António Costa, the president of the European Council, wrote on social media on Saturday. The council brings together the heads of state and government from across the bloc. “We will continue to build strong trade partnerships worldwide.”
It will be hard to move away from the United States because it is the world’s largest economy, home to a bustling consumer market and cutting-edge technologies and services.
But many American trading partners feel that they are left with little choice but to diversify. And while trade relationships are difficult to alter, they are also difficult to change back once they have been totally reorganized.
That is what is happening right now.
E.U. negotiators had engaged in months of back-and-forth with their U.S. counterparts in the run-up to President Trump’s announcement. And up until the middle of the week, Brussels hoped that it was closing in on at least the framework for a deal: The European Union would accept a base tariff of 10 percent, but it would also push for carve-outs for key sectors.
Instead, Mr. Trump began hinting on Thursday that the bloc — one of America’s most important trading partners — would receive a letter setting out a sweeping, across-the-board tariff rate.
The White House officially notified E.U. officials on Friday that their carefully drawn plans had blown up. And on Saturday, the public learned from Mr. Trump’s social media account that the bloc would be subject to a 30 percent rate.
Mr. Trump simultaneously announced that he would place a similar tariff on goods from Mexico. Canada’s rate is slightly higher, at 35 percent. And from Thailand (35 percent) and Bangladesh (35 percent) to Brazil (50 percent), dozens of U.S. trading partners appear to be headed for a similar fate.
Mr. Trump has backed down from threatened tariffs before, and he has indicated a willingness to negotiate these tariffs down before their Aug. 1 effective date — and the European Union and other economies are poised to continue with negotiations.
But the vibes are increasingly hostile.
Mr. Trump is “instrumentalizing uncertainty” to try to force America’s trading partners to make concessions, said Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia group, calling the latest announcements a “complete move of the goal posts.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement on Saturday sharply intensified calls in Europe for immediate retaliation.
The bloc has already created a retaliatory package, one that will kick in early Tuesday morning unless E.U. policymakers suspend it.
Trade officials are coming under pressure to respond to Mr. Trump with a show of strength. Brando Benifei, who heads the delegation for relations with the United States at the European Parliament, urged the E.U.’s executive branch to allow the retaliation to take effect — and to draw up plans for an even more aggressive response by Aug. 1.
“Trump is trying to divide and scare Europe,” he said.
European Union ambassadors will meet in Brussels on Sunday afternoon to discuss what to do on trade, an E.U. diplomat said.
But hitting back is just a first step; drawing closer to outside allies may prove even more meaningful in the long run.
Since Mr. Trump’s push to reorder the trading system kicked off in February, the European Union has been hustling to strike new trade agreements and deepen existing ones.
Canada and the European Union have pulled together. Britain and the European Union had a rapprochement five years after Britain officially exited the union. The bloc is working toward closer trading relationships with India and South Africa, and with countries across South America and Asia.
Nor is the European Union the only global power adopting such a strategy. Canada is also drawing closer to Southeast Asia, while Brazil and Mexico are working to deepen their ties.
Officials have even floated the idea of building trading structures that exclude the United States and China, which is widely blamed for supporting its factories to the point that they overproduce and flood global markets with cheap goods.
Ms. von der Leyen recently suggested that Europe could pursue a new collaboration between the bloc and a trading group of 11 countries that includes Japan, Vietnam and Australia, but that notably did not include the United States or China.
Closer ties between Europe and Indonesia could help both sides blunt the effect of the United States’ pullback. Airlangga Hartarto, the Indonesian minister for economic affairs, said in an interview on Thursday in Washington that while he hoped to reach a deal to defuse American tariffs, his country was diversifying its relationships in case tariffs remained.
If Mr. Trump imposes the threatened tariffs, Indonesia’s exports to the United States would fall, he said, and more than 300,000 Indonesians could lose their jobs.
But Indonesia’s exports of apparel, shoes, copper, stainless steel and other products could find other destinations, including Europe, thanks to the newly negotiated pact.
After the deal with Europe is ratified by both countries, most of the tariffs on both sides would be “close to zero,” Mr. Airlangga said.
One key question, analysts said, is whether America’s allies will go a step further. Instead of simply collaborating more with one another and leaving the United States out, could they actually gang up to counter the United States?
Large economies could consider coordinating their retaliation to Mr. Trump’s latest round of tariffs, said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, an economic policy research organization in Brussels. Banding together could give them more leverage.
“I would start to look for coordination,” he said. “That’s the rational thing.”
Ana Swanson contributed reporting from Washington.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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