25 July 2025 – An agreement may still be reached in the trade dispute between the United States and the European Union. However, there will be no exemptions for steel and aluminum, and a base tariff rate of 15% will apply. Now EU faces problems with its second most important trading partner – China.
Possible EU-US trade deal without steel and aluminum?
In the trade dispute between the United States and the European Union, more conciliatory tones have recently been heard, after the EU had previously tended to use rather bellicose and polemical language. Even though no final deal has been reached yet, it seems that a basic tariff rate of 15% on imports from the EU has been agreed upon. This is a significantly worse result than the one announced by the United Kingdom a few weeks ago.
EU unable to assert itself on steel and aluminum
The trade deficit in services and goods between the EU and the US in 2024 amounted to just €50 billion (approx. $59 billion). In comparison, the United Kingdom had a surplus of approximately 90 billion euros (approx. 106 billion USD) with the United States.
The fact that the socialist EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič was unable to achieve a single real success in the negotiations despite this considerable difference in the trade balance says a lot about the negotiating skills of the Brussels delegation in Washington. Likewise, the arrogance in terms of morality and the boundless overconfidence are likely to really annoy the partners in Washington, and rightly so. It also reinforces our demand from yesterday that the Trade Commissioner must be replaced urgently and that his failure is entirely attributable to the President of the Commission.
Incidentally, it is not only the reasons given so far that show the Commissioner to be unsuitable for the job, but also his CV. Communism flows through his veins 100%.
EU has the highest protective tariffs for steel worldwide
According to media reports, European negotiators were also unable to prevail on the issue of Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports into the United States, which were raised to 50% this year. European steel manufacturers had previously polemicized this possible scenario as “the end of EU steel production.” Here, too, the UK had already set the benchmark and secured the old 25% tariffs under Section 232.
The fact that Section 232 tariffs are to continue to apply without restriction to steel and aluminum from Europe is likely to be related, among other things, to the fact that the EU itself has a safeguard measure in place for certain steel products and the Carbon Border Tax CBAM (and the associated bureaucracy and CO2 costs), and is currently looking for a successor to the safeguard measure.
It is therefore fair to say that European steel manufacturers in particular, with their excessive demands for trade protection measures, now seem to have become victims of their own lobbying efforts.
EU faces problems with its second most important trading partner
The European Union repeatedly makes the same accusations against its second most important trading partner, China. And these accusations are being taken less and less seriously in the world’s most populous country.
Tensions run high at summit meeting between China and EU
There was obviously a lot of friction at the summit meeting between the European Union and the People’s Republic of China. So much so that the summit was shortened from two days to one. Even though EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President António Costa stood smiling with Chinese President Xi Jinping in front of the cameras of the international media.
Accusations against China largely outdated?
Many of the accusations are standard political rhetoric from Brussels. China is accused of producing too many CO2 emissions – yet the difference in CO2 emissions per capita per year is just 2 tons. And the EU, whose per capita income is about three times higher than that of China, has barely managed to reduce CO2 emissions per citizen by more than 0.4 tons since 2015.
And while the EU has been expanding its renewable energies for decades, China has built up more than twice as much capacity in just a few years and is expanding it at an ever-faster pace. As European power grids threaten to collapse under the load of clean energy, Asia is already far ahead of Europe in this area as well.
It might therefore be a good idea to finally let people who have a long business relationship with China take part in the negotiations – which could make communication on both sides much easier.
Thorsten Gerber, CEO of the Gerber Group, commented today: “Dear Commission, Washington does not take you seriously, and now neither does China. How long do you intend to keep your eyes closed to reality?“ He went on to say to Brussels: ”Unfortunately, the EC and its monarch really believe what they say and the myth that they are morally and ideologically the best.“ Thorsten Gerber concluded by saying: ”It always becomes difficult when self-perception and external perception drift too far apart.”
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