Trump Threatens 50% Tariffs On EU And 25% Penalties On Smart Phones As His Trade War Intensifies | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday threatened a 50% tax on all imports from the European Union as effectively a 25% tariff on smartphones except these merchandise are made in America.

The threats, delivered over social media, replicate Trump’s means to disrupt the worldwide financial system with a burst of typing, in addition to the fact that his tariffs have but to provide the commerce offers he’s searching for or the return of home manufacturing he has promised voters.

The Republican president stated he desires to cost larger import taxes on items from the EU, a longstanding US ally, than from China, a geopolitical rival that had its tariffs reduce to 30% this month so Washington and Beijing might maintain negotiations. Trump was upset by the shortage of progress in commerce talks with the EU, which has proposed mutually chopping tariffs to zero even because the president has publicly insisted on preserving a baseline 10% tax on most imports.

“Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States.”

Speaking later within the Oval Office, Trump pressured that he was not searching for a take care of the EU and would possibly delay the tariffs if extra corporations invested within the United States.

“I’m not looking for a deal,” Trump instructed the reporters. “We’ve set the deal. It’s at 50%.”

The EU’s high commerce official, Maros Sefcovic, posted on the social media website X that he spoke Friday with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

“The EU’s fully engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both,” Sefcovic stated. “EU-US trade is unmatched & must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”

Trump’s tariffs in opposition to Europe had been preceded by a risk of import taxes in opposition to Apple for its plans to proceed making its iPhone in Asia. Apple now joins Amazon, Walmart and different main U.S. corporations within the White House’s crosshairs as they fight to reply to the uncertainty and inflationary pressures unleashed by his tariffs.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”

Trump later clarified his publish to say that each one smartphones made overseas could be taxed and the tariffs could possibly be coming as quickly as the top of June.

“It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product,” Trump stated. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair.”

The statements by Trump are crucial in that he suggests the corporate itself would bear the worth of tariffs, contradicting his earlier claims as he rolled out a collection of aggressive tariffs over the previous a number of months that international international locations would shoulder the price of the import taxes. In normal, importers pay the tariffs and the prices are sometimes handed alongside to customers within the type of larger costs.

In response to Trump’s tariffs on China, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated earlier this month that almost all iPhones bought within the U.S. through the present fiscal quarter would come from India, with iPads and different units being imported from Vietnam. After Trump rolled out tariffs in April, financial institution analysts estimated {that a} $1,200 iPhone would if made in America bounce in value wherever from $1,500 to $3,500.

Stocks bought off after Trump’s postings, with the S&P 500 index down roughly 0.67%. The markets have developed a hair-trigger sensitivity to the U.S. president’s statements, typically slumping when he pronounces excessive tariffs and rallying when he retreats from these threats.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to offer some readability on Trump’s postings in a Friday interview on the Fox News present “America’s Newsroom.”

Bessent stated the EU has a “collective action problem” as a result of its 27 member states are being represented by “this one group in Brussels,” such that the “underlying countries don’t even know what the EU is negotiating on their behalf.”

The Treasury secretary stated he was not in a White House assembly this week that Cook attended, however he additionally spoke with the Apple CEO this week. Bessent stated the purpose was to have Apple convey extra of its laptop chip provide chain into the U.S.

The core of Trump’s argument in opposition to the EU is that America runs a “totally unacceptable” commerce deficit with the 27 member states. Countries run commerce deficits once they import extra items than they export.

From the vantage level of the EU’s government fee, commerce with the U.S. is roughly in steadiness if each items and providers are included. As a world middle for finance and expertise, the U.S. runs a commerce surplus in providers with Europe. That offsets among the commerce hole in items and places the imbalance at 48 billion euros ($54 billion).

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stated the EU’s government fee has his nation’s full assist in working to “preserve our access to the American market.”

“I think such tariffs help no one, but would just lead to economic development in both markets suffering,” Wadephul stated in Berlin. “So we are still counting on negotiations, and support the European Commission in defending Europe and the European market while at the same time working on persuasion in America.”

Trump aides have stated the purpose of his tariffs was to isolate China and strike new agreements with allies, however the president’s tariff threats undermine the logic of these claims. Not solely might the EU face larger tariffs than China, however the bloc of member states might need been higher off by establishing a broad entrance with China and different international locations in opposition to Trump’s commerce coverage, stated German economist Marcel Fratscher.

“The strategy of the EU Commission and Germany in the trade conflict with Trump is a total failure,” Fratscher, the pinnacle of the German Institute for Economic Research, stated on X. “This was a failure you could see coming — Trump sees Europe’s wavering, hesitation and concessions as the weaknesses that they are.”

Mary Lovely, a senior fellow on the Peterson Institute for International Economics, stated the 50% tariffs on Europe are probably a “negotiating ploy” by Trump, as he has beforehand retreated on tariffs after taking a tough line.

She stated Trump appears to imagine that negotiations function by going to a “threat point” that might threat self-harm to the U.S. simply to show how severe he’s, in hopes that doing so would produce an settlement.

But Lovely stated that within the long-run Trump’s method “suggests that the U.S. is an unreliable trading partner, that it operates on whim, not on rule of law.”

Trump has run cold and hot on his relationship with Apple, an indication that currying favor with him may not essentially defend an organization from his anger. He has primarily instructed corporations comparable to Walmart to “eat” the prices of his tariffs as an alternative of elevating costs, though doing so might squeeze income and trigger layoffs. He now seems to deploying an analogous diploma of strain to pressure Apple to simply accept the upper prices of relocating its provide chains.

Trump had beforehand created an exemption on electronics imported from China to assist corporations comparable to Apple, one thing he might now take away. He additionally threatened separate 25% import taxes on laptop chips and will have the tariffs schedule rewritten in ways in which might expose Apple merchandise to the taxes.

Until not too long ago, the U.S. president repeatedly bragged in regards to the $500 billion that Apple in February pledged to speculate domestically as a part of its improvement of synthetic intelligence applied sciences. But he publicly turned in opposition to the corporate final week whereas talking in Qatar.

“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump instructed the viewers. “I said to him: ‘My friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”

Analysts have been skeptical that Apple might rapidly shift machine manufacturing to the U.S., primarily as a result of it has spent a long time embedding complicated provide chains in China to feed the factories. But it additionally has the problem of grappling with “the unpredictable nature of the current U.S. administration,” stated Ben Wood, chief analyst at U.Ok.-based analysis agency CCS Insight.

“At any moment, things can change overnight, making it extremely difficult for companies such as Apple to plan their business,” Wood stated. “It seems that despite the best efforts of the Apple leadership team to lobby the U.S. administration to treat the iPhone more favorably, a curveball can come out of nowhere and derail any plans they have in place.”

AP writers Paul Wiseman, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.