.
Hungary
July 28, 2025 1:40 pm CET European Commission chief is a featherweight negotiator, Hungarian PM fumes after an EU-U.S. trade deal was agreed. Orbán joins a growing chorus of critics, spanning different positions on the ideological spectrum, who say Brussels could have obtained a better deal. Trump ate der Leyen for breakfast, Orbán ’grumbles’ today morning on his podcast. The Hungarian prime minister is both a longtime critic of Brussels and its leadership and a vocal supporter of Trump and his MAGA agenda. Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó wrote today on X that the deal is ’another sign that Brussels needs new leadership.” (Source: Politico - U.S.)
by 'Stasiuk
Belgium
28.07.2025 EU-US trade deal 'not an agreement we can celebrate,' Belgian foreign minister Prevot says. 'We are fully aware of pressure this will put on our industry.' Prime Minister De Wever also reacted to the agreement: "As we await full details of the new EU-US trade agreement, one thing is clear: this is a moment of relief but not of celebration. Tariffs will increase in several areas and some key questions remain unresolved.' "I sincerely hope the United States will, in due course, turn away again from the delusion of protectionism and once again embrace the value of free trade – a cornerstone of shared prosperity," he said on X yesterday. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
France
28.07.2025 'It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, united to uphold their values and defend their interests, resigns itself to submission," the French prime minister Francois Bayrou wrote on X today. He denounced the recent EU-US trade deal as a dark day for the bloc that signaled its 'submission.' (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
Italy
28.07.2025 Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni today welcomed the recent EU-US trade deal, speaking to reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. "I have always thought, and continue to think, that a trade escalation between Europe and the United States would have had unpredictable and potentially devastating consequences.' Stressing that the agreement remains a non-binding framework and that the details still need to be studied, Meloni noted there is still room to fight, according to ANSA news agency. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
Poland
28.07.2025 Poland’s opposition is calling for a formal investigation today after the lower-house speaker, Holownia, also leader of a junior coalition party, Polska 2050, said Friday he had been encouraged to delay convening the National Assembly, pressured to halt the swearing-in of the new president Nawrocki on August 6, calling the alleged plan a 'coup d’etat.' Since Nawrocki, backed by PiS, won Poland’s presidential runoff on June 1, the three-way coalition – Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), the Left and Polska 2050 – has become increasingly unstable, with Holownia reportedly recently discussing with PiS leader Kaczynski creating a new government coalition. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
European Commission
28th July 2025 Even the most ardent Europhiles have found it hard to put a positive spin on the deal. Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium and usually the most maniacal of EU fanboys, slammed the deal as not only ‘badly negotiated’, but also ‘scandalous’ and a ‘disaster’, with ‘not one concession from the American side’. Member states, from Ireland to France, have been similarly unenthusiastic. Yet the brutal truth is that the deal reflects how America views the EU – as strategically weak and politically empty. From a military perspective, the deal must have been particularly humiliating. As recently as March, EU elites trumpeted their massive re-armament plan as the key to achieving European strategic autonomy. Shortly after, in typical EU fashion, it was forced to rename those plans from ‘Rearm Europe’ to ‘Readiness 2030’, because some worried it sounded too threatening. The EU, perhaps realising that it couldn’t even talk tough anymore, might well have decided that military subservience to the US was its best bet after all. But it’s the economy, more than anything else, that explains the one-sidedness of this deal. The US is now roughly twice as rich in per-capita terms as the EU, despite the pair being relatively equal just a few decades ago. The US and China lead the way in a host of new technologies, while the EU celebrates its regulations for an AI industry that does not even exist on European soil. The EU’s only answer to its malaise is to propose yet more centralisation and bureaucratisation of Europe’s economies, even though this is one of the very things strangling Europe’s prosperity. For der Leyen and her ilk, it is seemingly just another day at the office. They still see Trump as an aberration, rather than a serious warning to their unaccountable, anti-democratic way of doing politics. In his press conference with der Leyen, Trump openly mocked the totems of her presidency: green energy and borderless migration, two policies never voted on or for by Europeans, yet the ones most unsparingly enforced by Brussels. In fact, the EU’s trade disaster is deeply connected to the wildly unpopular migration policies favoured by EU elites. In both cases, the problem stems from the fact that Europe is governed by a class which has no sense of representing European, let alone national, interests. The EU’s single-minded pursuit of open borders and environmentalism are signs of an elite wildly out of touch with ordinary Europeans – and wildly unprepared for the new global era that Trump is inaugurating. Until Europe’s political class is replaced by national movements with a strong sense of their own interests, the subordination represented by its trade deal with America - which Weber, leader of the European People’s Party described as 'damage control’ and better than not reaching a deal at all - will only be the beginning of its humiliation. (Source: Spiked - United Kingdom)
by Reynolds, the head of policy at MCC Brussels.
28 Jul 2025 Behind the diplomatic talk, analysts say the outcome leaves the EU humiliated and weakened on all fronts - both economically and politically. For Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali Italian think tank, the terrible deal struck by the EU raises a deeper question: why. 'What’s perhaps more revealing, is understanding why the EU has, from the very beginning of negotiations, shown such profound weakness and reluctance to take retaliatory action - even in areas where it held more leverage.' In the not-so-distant past, the EU argued that even US tariffs of 10% would meet with retaliation. That fighting spirit was nowhere to be seen in Scotland over the weekend. The EU has chosen to retain strategic dependence on the US for the time being. (Source: The Parliament Magazine – based in Brussels, Belgium, owned by a British company)
28 July 2025 Both sides can paint this agreement as something of a victory. For the EU, the tariffs could have been worse: it is not as good as the UK's 10% tariff rate, but is the same as the 15% rate that Japan negotiated last week. For the US it equates to the expectation of roughly $90bn of tariff revenue into government coffers – based on last year's trade figures, plus there's hundreds of billions of dollars of investment now due to come into the US. One thing is clear: Trump is celebrating. It is less clear what the EU gains. Brussels can point to the fact that the lower rate applies to many major European exports. It also means EU carmakers will face a 15% US import tax, rather than the 25% global tariff that was introduced in April. But in return the EU is 'opening up their countries at zero tariff' to American exports, Trump said. EU steel and aluminium will also continue to face a 50% tariff when sold into the US. It was notable that der Leyen spoke about rebalancing the trading relationship. Previously the EU has argued the relationship is not out of balance as the EU buys far more services from America than it sells to them. It sounded as though der Leyen was deliberately speaking Trump's language in order to seal the agreement. (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)
United Kingdom
28 July 2025) No text of the EU-US agreement has yet been published. The EU will still face a new 15% tariff on the goods it sells into America. That is higher than the 10% tariffs the UK faces on goods exports to the US. The detail of the final US-EU agreement, which has not yet been published, is key. The UK's lower baseline tariff rate (10% vs 15%) could offer an advantage to UK-based firms competing with EU-based companies for sales into the US. In the two agreements and around both a lack of clarity make it tricky to compare them. In the case of car exports, the UK-US agreement specifies a quota of 100,000 vehicles a year, which is roughly the number of cars the UK sells into the US at the moment. Each vehicle sold above that quota would be hit with the US's 25% tariff on car imports. In 2024 the EU sold around 758,000 vehicles to the US. The UK-US agreement also says the UK will negotiate an agreement to avoid future US tariffs on pharmaceutical imports. We don't know what the nature of any UK exception would be. On Sunday the US president suggested it would not, EU commission president der Leyen suggested it would. Similarly, it's unclear whether the EU's 15% baseline tariff incorporates existing US import tariffs, or whether, as in the case of the UK's 10% tariff, it will be applied on top of existing import levies. If the UK's tariffs are "stacked" but those of the EU are not, the overall effective tariff imposed on some EU goods could end being lower than what's imposed on some UK goods. UK steel exported to the US is currently subject to a 25% tariff, which is lower than the 50% global rate on imports of the metal imposed by Trump in June. The president granted the UK this partial exemption to allow time for implementation of the US-UK trade deal. UK officials hope that resolved technical issues will mean UK firms will be able to export steel to the US up to a certain quota that avoids even this 25% tariff. US officials have briefed that under the EU-US deal, EU steel will remain subject to the US's global 50% tariff on metal imports, that significantly benefits UK steel exporters relative to their EU counterparts. In theory, EU manufacturers - in steel and other sectors - could move some of their production to the UK to benefit from lower tariffs when exporting to the US. Given the uncertainty surrounding US trade policy, companies in modern supply chains are’nt going to make big, long-term relocation decisions based on marginal tariff differences. To take advantage of any such tariff differences businesses need to feel reasonably secure that the differences will last. The US is the UK's single largest national trade partner. In 2024, the UK exported £196bn of goods and services to the US, 22.5% of all exports. In 2024, the UK exported £358bn of goods and services to the EU, 41% of all exports. Demand for EU exports from the United States is likely to fall. I that were to lead to a slowdown in the European Union, that would be bad for the United Kingdom as it would lead to a reduction in demand. Most economists also expect Trump's tariffs to ultimately slow the growth of the US economy, which would also harm UK firms exporting to the US. (Source: BBC - United KIngdom)
.5 7 29 00:59
