U.S. has breached trade deal and Europe is ready to retaliate, top trade lawmaker tells CNBC
The U.S. has breached the terms of its trade deal with the European Union and the bloc is ready to retaliate if necessary, a top EU trade lawmaker told CNBC.
“We wanted to have really stability and predictability. And unfortunately, the government, the president of the United States, has really made a breach of this deal several times,” Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s international trade committee, told CNBC on Tuesday.
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, he responded with announcements of fresh levies, with a universal 10% levy on all imports. Trump said Saturday that the rate would be raised to 15%, although the timing of that remains unclear, and the levy came into effect at 10% early Tuesday.
European officials expressed concern about the latest levy, signaling that it could pose a threat to the trade deal it signed with the U.S. last summer.
The European Parliament announced Monday that it has paused work on ratifying the U.S.-EU trade deal while it sought clarity from the White House on whether the deal still stands.
That agreement included a baseline 15% tariff on most EU goods entering the U.S. but included exemptions for specific sectors. Others, like steel and aluminum, face a higher 50% levy, as well as their “derivative” products.
Lange said the EU was ready to adhere to the commitments laid out in the 2025 trade deal but that the U.S. had already shifted its position on the agreement “several times” with tariff changes and hazards, including Trump’s threat in January to impose higher levies on European countries supporting Denmark’s sovereignty in Greenland.
“We are sticking to the deal. A deal is a deal, no doubt about. But on the U.S. side, there was a breaking [of the agreement] some weeks after the deal was concluded, 400 products — so-called derivatives — were lifted from 15 to 50% and this is really harming a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
“Then we had this Greenland exercise, and now we have this 15 -plus tariff. So this is a clear breaking on the side of the United States and several times. And this is not certainty,” he said.
“We need clarity, and this is also my clear request for the United States government — give us a certainty that for the next three years, we have no other irritations with new tariffs from the United States, and then we stick to the deal.”
‘Bazooka’ at the ready?
The U.S. has sent mixed messages over whether trade deals, such as those with the EU and U.K., remain valid under the new tariffs regime.
At the weekend, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer appeared to suggest that the president’s trade policy had not changed fundamentally, and that the deals still stand.
European officials want urgent clarity on the matter, however, and French officials appeared to be pushing for the EU to consider using its Anti-Coercion Instrument, or ACI, as a retaliatory measure, if necessary.
The ACI is seen as a nuclear option of economic counter-measures as it could see the EU restrict U.S. suppliers’ access to the EU market, excluding them from participation in public tenders in the bloc, as well as putting export and import restrictions on goods and services and putting potential limits on foreign direct investment in the region.
Several European countries, and particularly exporters like Germany and Italy, are generally opposed to using the trade “bazooka” and it has never been used before.
Lange said the EU remained willing to use the ACI if necessary, but said he would not call it a “bazooka.”
“I would not call it bazooka ... It’s a normal legislation for a specific case, if one country is using tariffs, trade policy, investment policy, as a coercive instrument, then we will use it [the ACI],” Lange said.
“At the moment, I see the case is not given [to use it], but we have it on the table. If necessary, we will use it,” he said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/us-...jx9mEW1u_lR3l_aem_SGqdiDy_3z9n0WnJqv5bhgSilly Europeans. Did they actually believe that trump would ever honor any deal he makes with them? It seems they are learning the hard way what many of us have know for a long while now.
