Time runs out to avert new trade war as US patience with EU wears thin

Time runs out to avert new trade war as US patience with EU wears thin

POLITICO — 2026-03-12

News from Brussels

European and American officials are scrambling to avoid a return to their transatlantic trade war, amid increasing frustration in Washington over the EU’s failure to implement the transatlantic trade deal they agreed last summer.

A trio of senior European lawmakers will travel to Washington next week, hoping to meet U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who accuses the EU of implementing “zero percent” of the trade accord reached at President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last July 27.

The mission to the U.S. comes amid of flurry of diplomatic contacts between EU and U.S. officials ahead of a high-stakes vote by European lawmakers expected on March 26 that will determine whether Brussels can implement last year’s accord.

That vote is at risk of being delayed, yet again, after a series of previous hold ups. U.S. patience is wearing thin, raising the prospect that the tariff conflict could flare up again.

“The EU has done approximately zero percent of what they were supposed to do for their trade deal with us. We quickly after the Turnberry deal came into compliance with that deal,” Greer said during a press call on Wednesday. 

“The European Union has had their legislation for their tariffs pending for many, many, many, many months,” he added. 

Top EU parliamentary negotiators will meet on March 17 to decide whether to push back their vote again.

The Turnberry agreement is widely seen in Europe as a one-sided pact. In it, the EU accepted a 15 percent U.S. tariff on most exports, while itself pledging to scrap all tariffs on U.S. industrial goods. Many EU lawmakers fear that Trump could yet renege on the deal to make more tariff threats, as he has done over Greenland and Spain. 

In the Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party — the political family of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — wants to see the deal approved to avoid retaliation by Trump and bring stability to businesses.

The Socialists & Democrats, liberals and Greens have voted against moving forward, however, after balking at the U.S. president’s latest tariff menaces against Spain, his strikes on Iran and his threats to stage a “friendly takeover” of Cuba.

Cracks in trust

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has sought to reassure the Europeans that the U.S. will stick by the deal. Yet skepticism persists.

“How can we get clarity with Trump [who] doesn’t respect the deals? I think that, for now, what we would need is some public statement on the willingness to respect the deal,” Brando Benifei, an Italian Socialist who is the Parliament’s point person for relations with the U.S., said on Tuesday. 

Benifei will be one of the three MEPs traveling to meet Greer. The others are Bernd Lange, the German Social Democrat who chairs the European Parliament’s trade committee, and Polish center-right lawmaker Michał Szczerba, who sits on the foreign and security committees.

They hope to meet Greer on March 20, but the EU lawmakers could already have delayed the vote by then. “I hope that we can find some common ground,” Lange said.

Karin Karlsbro, a Swedish liberal who is skeptical on the trade pact, is also expected to meet with representatives of the U.S. mission to the EU, her office said.

And Željana Zovko, the top negotiator on the file from the EPP, the biggest grouping in Parliament, will meet with U.S. Ambassador Andrew Puzder on Monday, she told POLITICO.

Despite the worries from the U.S. side, Anna Cavazzini, the lead lawmaker on the file in the Greens group who is spearheading opposition to the deal, said she had not been contacted by the Americans.

Unreliable partner

Despite Bessent’s pledge on the Turnberry pact, the EU remains wary over what Trump will do next. The U.S. has, only this week, launched new investigations into unfair trade practices that could trigger more tariffs against the EU.

That has redoubled concerns in Brussels that Trump plans to plow on with his aggressive trade agenda against Europe, undeterred by a Supreme Court ruling last month that substantially overturned his original tariff agenda.

On top of the latest investigations, people close to the file say the White House will not shy away from imposing tariffs on national security grounds, such as Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

Washington’s double-sided approach is not lost on European lawmakers. 

“‘We’ll stick to the deal.’ And less than 24 hours later, they are already threatening us with new tariffs. It is impossible to work with the Trump administration like this,” the Socialist group’s vice president for trade policy, Kathleen Van Brempt, said in a post on X Thursday. 

The EPP’s top trade lawmaker, Jörgen Warborn, last week pitched a “sunrise clause,” meaning the deal would only finally kick in if Washington upheld its side of the bargain.

“That would give clarity because what the sunrise clause is doing, it’s making sure that the deal doesn’t kick in before it is confirmed that all the elements of the deal are upheld,” Warborn told POLITICO on Tuesday.

Benifei said the sunrise clause could enable his group to support the pact. Still, he explained, this would require provisions allowing the Commission not to implement the EU-U.S. agreement until Washington stops threatening the EU’s digital rules, and until the U.S. lowers tariffs on EU steel derivatives.

“We are not there,” he said, expressing skepticism that the EPP would be willing to place such tough demands on the Commission.

“They [EPP lawmakers] are a bit worried about the situation that is not moving,” he said. “I need to see what they are actually ready to do, because to be frank, my impression is that they are a bit in the mood [of saying] …‘Just let’s not make Trump angry.’”