The European Union, taken as a whole, is America’s biggest trading partner. That makes President Trump’s fresh tariffs especially painful for the 27-nation bloc — but also gives it a uniquely large amount of economic weight to throw around in response.
In the hours after Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement on Wednesday, European leaders began to make clear that they plan to do so.
Among the options: to impose trade barriers on U.S. services firms, in particular giant technology companies like Google who do a huge amount of E.U. business. And policymakers are already finalizing lists of jacked-up tariffs that could go into effect as soon as mid-April. Member state representatives are expected to vote on them next week, a senior European official said on Thursday, speaking anonymously to brief reporters.
Officials could add to those lists in the coming weeks, in response to both auto tariffs and Mr. Trump’s freshly announced 20 percent levy on the European Union. They have not yet committed to a specific plan.
Commenting on the new U.S. tariffs early Thursday morning, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive arm, said, “There seems to be no order in the disorder, no clear path to the complexity and chaos that is being created,” adding that Europeans felt “let down by our oldest ally.”
The European Union was built around free trade and cooperation, and its leaders remain adamant that tariffs are bad for everyone. Europe is still trying to push for active discussions, and the E.U. trade commissioner said on social media on Thursday that he would speak to his U.S. counterparts tomorrow.
But American officials have so far shown little appetite for quick resolution. Mr. Trump’s cabinet members have at times been hard to reach, or have even canceled meetings on their European counterparts.
While Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has been talking with the trade commissioner, it is unclear how much influence Mr. Lutnick has over what ultimately happens.
At the same time, the White House has made a habit of criticizing the E.U., with Mr. Trump expressing a consistent animosity. He has not met with Ms. von der Leyen since taking office. He has said the bloc was created to “screw” the United States. During the Rose Garden announcement of his new tariffs, he said the E.U. ripped America off in a way that was “pathetic.”
Later on Wednesday, Mr. Lutnick told Fox News that Europe refused to take American beef “because our beef is beautiful — and theirs is weak,” calling it “unbelievable.”
The fresh wave of tariffs are Mr. Trump’s latest move to shake up the way America’s alliances operate. The White House is already pressuring Europe to spend more on its own defense and has backed away from supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia in a way that has sent shock waves across the continent.
The United States’ pivot on military issues is front of mind as E.U. defense ministers meet Thursday in Warsaw, and as NATO foreign ministers also gather in Brussels. Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, is at the NATO meeting.
But the deepening trade war is further turning the trans-Atlantic partnership into a trans-Atlantic rift, and Mr. Trump’s latest announcement could have far-reaching consequences that forever change the relationship between America and its longstanding allies.
The E.U. is arguably America’s most important economic relationship. It alone is responsible for nearly a fifth of American imports, and European consumers are a huge market for American services.
Still, Americans officials have made it clear that what they want is to reorder the global trading system, which has left Brussels grasping for tools that could give it some advantage in discussions.
That’s where services could come in.
European officials have already produced plans to put tariffs on a wide range of physical products in response to the recently imposed steel and aluminum levies.
Officials could tariff additional goods in response to car tariffs and the newly announced wave. But their firepower when it comes to physical products is somewhat limited: Europe sells Americans more goods than it buys from them.
In services, that balance is reversed. European consumers are a huge market for American technology products in particular, from search engines to cloud services. In 2023, the European Union ran a service deficit with the United States of 109 billion euros (nearly $120 billion).
While that makes targeting services trade a potentially powerful tool, it is also a largely untried one.
Brussels has several tools in its arsenal that could target services, but by far the most powerful option is a new weapon it calls its “Anti-Coercion Instrument.” Created in 2021 and in force only since 2023, it allows the E.U. to hit a trading partner with a “wide range of possible countermeasures.”
Such measures could include tariffs, restrictions on trade in services and limits on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. That means that the E.U. could hit big technology firms, like Google. Several European diplomats said its use was a distinct possibility, should the trade war escalate.
A French official made it clear on Thursday that online services could be in the cross hairs, and German officials also talked about the need to increase pressure on the United States.
Using the weapon requires deliberations within the E.U. and efforts to rectify the problem with the trading partner. The quickest restrictions could be fully in place is probably about six months, said Joanna Redelbach, who is counsel at the law firm Van Bael & Bellis and who has closely analyzed it.
Still, it is a potentially powerful threat.
“Once it is triggered, the commission can go very far in how it responds,” she said, referring to the E.U. executive arm, the European Commission.
Using the tool would escalate a trade war that Brussels has up until this point been trying to de-escalate. And Europe often lacks homegrown alternatives when it comes to search engines or cloud services.
“It would be carefully calibrated,” said Jorn Fleck, senior director with the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, a research institute. “It’s a difficult thing to do.”
Yet for Europe, it is becoming clear that easy options are few and far between.
“To prevent full escalation, we’d need to see progress over the next two to four weeks,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a political research firm.
But he added that the challenge, and the reality that could lead to a painful escalation before de-escalation, was that the Trump administration seemed to respond not to carrots and offers to negotiate — the tactics Europe has tried so far — but to shows of strength.
“You have to punch the administration in the face,” he said. “The punch has to land.”
