President Trump has locked down a major trade deal with Europe that favors the United States - bigly - and Trump haters are speechless.
Trump announced the historic agreement on Sunday opposite European Union commissioner Ursula von der Leyen at one of his golf courses in Scotland.
The deal has been widely described as a virtual surrender by Europe, America's largest trade partner, with the Trump-hating Washington Post calling it "lopsided." The prime minister of France slammed the agreement as a "dark day" and a capitulation to Trump, who launched a global trade war months ago to widespread skepticism.
The trade deal applies 15% tariffs on European imports, including automobiles, in addition to existing "sectoral tariffs" on goods like steel and aluminum.
Europe also agreed to buy $750 billion in American energy, to invest another $600 billion in the U.S and to lower tariffs on American cars from 10% to 2.5%.
The White House touted the agreement as a fundamental "rebalancing" of "the economic relationship between the world’s two largest economies."
It is the most significant deal yet to emerge from Trump's risky effort to realign the global trade system, which he has long said disadvantages the U.S.
"So we have a tariff of 15%, we have the opening up of all of the European countries, which I think I could say were essentially closed,” Trump said. “I mean, you weren’t exactly taking our orders, you weren’t exactly taking our agriculture, and then you would have smaller things, but for the most part, it was closed, and now it’s open.”
In exchange for making steep concessions, Europe got little in return except relief from the uncertainty of Trump's trade war.
Europe was facing a Friday deadline to make a deal or face tariffs as high as 30%. The final terms have left Eurocrats scrambling to save face, with Von der Leyen calling the deal the "best we could get."
"We should not forget where we came from,” von der Leyen said. “Fifteen percent is certainly a challenge for some, but we should not forget it keeps us the access to the American markets.”
Germany, Europe's largest economy, was similarly sanguine about the deal, which provided some small relief for Germany's largest industry: cars. The tariff of 15% is much higher than what Germany is used to, but lower than the 27.5% auto tariff that Trump imposed in April.
“A trade conflict has been averted that would have severely impacted the export-oriented German economy,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
