Trump Calls for 50% Tariff on EU, Starting June 1

President Donald Trump on Friday said he is “recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union” after complaining that trade negotiations have stalled.

The steep new import duties would start June 1, Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The EU “has been very difficult to deal with,” Trump wrote of the 27-nation bloc. “Our discussions with them are going nowhere!”

Asked later Friday if he was looking to cut a deal with the EU in the next nine days, Trump said he was not.

“I just said, it’s time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game,” he said during an executive order signing event at the White House.

“I’m not looking for a deal,” added Trump, who frequently praises tariffs as a clutch negotiating tool and a way to bring in federal revenue.

“I mean, we’ve set the deal. It’s at 50%.”

Trump’s initial announcement came less than 30 minutes after he threatened to impose a tariff of at least 25% on Apple’s iPhones if the company does not start manufacturing them in the United States.

U.S. stock futures sank immediately following the posts, which showed the Republican president once again wielding the threat of massive import taxes in response to economic activity he disfavors.

European stock markets fell 2%.

It’s a reversal in momentum for Trump, who recently touted preliminary trade “deals” with China and the United Kingdom and has backed off other tariff proposals. Markets were encouraged by those moves, as investors felt relief from the economic uncertainty and instability Trump’s tariffs had threatened to create.

But Trump “believes that the EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other important trading partners,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox News interview Friday morning.

Asked if the EU will be able to negotiate in the nine days before the 50% tariffs kick in, Bessent said, “I would hope that this would light a fire under the EU.”

Meanwhile, the White House view Friday morning was that the stock market was overreacting to Trump’s tariff comments, CNBC’s Eamon Javers reported.

The White House, said Javers, did not interpret the president’s post as a formal statement of policy.

The EU was the second-largest purchaser of U.S. exports in 2022, taking in nearly $351 billion in American goods, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Trump has long accused Europe of taking unfair advantage of the U.S. through trade. He announced a blanket 20% tariff on the EU on April 2 as part of his “reciprocal” tariff plan, though he quickly revised that duty down to 10% for 90 days.

Europe is also dealing with Trump’s sector-specific tariffs, including a 25% levy on all steel and aluminum imports.

“To go to 10% was going to be the highest tariff rate that we had on the world in 90 years. To go to 50% is a completely different order of magnitude,” Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said Friday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“If they’re putting in place tariffs that have a stagflationary impact, which is to say they slowed down output by raising the cost of production while also raising prices, then that’s the Central Bank’s worst situation,” Goolsbee said.