Trump trade chaos: European Union in US President’s sights with another tax proposal

Fears about President Donald Trump’s trade agenda have been reignited after threats of a 50 per cent tariff on the European Union and a tax on offshore production of Apple iPhones.

Mr Trump said Friday in a social media post that the higher charge on the EU would start on June 1 because “our discussions with them are going nowhere,” adding that he saw the bloc as “very difficult to deal with.”

“The president believes that the EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other important trading partners,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox News after Trump’s message, expressing hope “this would light a fire under the EU.”

Separately, Trump posted that he already told Apple the company’s popular smartphones should be made in the US and that he was nonplussed by its effort to partially move production from China to India.

He threatened a 25 per cent levy on the phones unless the company moved production to the United States.

Equities dropped across the globe, with the S&P 500 Index and the Stoxx Europe 600 Index each sinking about 1 per cent.

Apple led a selloff in tech, falling 2 per cent. The dollar slid toward its lowest since 2023 and Treasury yields plunged across the curve.

The president’s missives represented a fresh round of trade brinkmanship, after previously indicating he was looking to wind down talks with partners over his April 2 duties, which he paused for 90 days to allow for negotiations.

Mr Trump’s attention this week has mostly been focused on a massive tax and spending package currently being considered by the US Congress.

His latest posturing comes after the EU earlier this week shared a revived trade proposal with the US in a bid to jump-start talks.

The EU’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, is planning to hold a call with Jamieson Greer, his US counterpart, on Friday to take stock of negotiations, a European Commission spokesperson said before Trump’s post.

A spokesperson for the commission declined to comment on the president’s threat ahead of the discussion.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin called Trump’s suggestion “enormously disappointing.”

“Tariffs are damaging to all sides,” Martin posted on X.

“A negotiated outcome is the best possible result for both sides, as well as for global trade.”

The latest tariff threat would hit $321 billion worth of US-EU goods trade, lowering US gross domestic product by close to 0.6 per cent and increasing consumer prices by more than 0.3 per cent, according to Bloomberg Economics calculations.