E.U. officials announced on Thursday that they would delay their plans for retaliatory tariffs after President Trump’s abrupt decision to hit pause on some of the levies he had placed on Europe and much of the rest of the world.
Mr. Trump’s announcement, a day before, had signaled what European leaders were hoping for: a possible willingness to negotiate.
Washington’s pivot came just hours after European officials had approved retaliatory levies of 10 to 25 percent on about $23 billion of U.S. imports. But given the American shift in stance, E.U. leaders said on Thursday that they would take a 90-day pause of their own.
“If negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced in a statement. “Preparatory work on further countermeasures continues.”
The Trump administration is specifically pausing what it has called “reciprocal” tariffs — across-the-board taxes that apply in different amounts to different countries. Mr. Trump announced those levies on April 2 and said that the European Union would face a levy of 20 percent. With his about-face on Wednesday, the bloc would most likely instead face a 10 percent across-the-board tariff for the next 90 days.
But the 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump has placed on both cars and on steel and aluminum seemed to be still in place — and the retaliation that Europe approved on Wednesday was in response to those metal-sector tariffs, not to the tariffs that Mr. Trump has now delayed. The retaliation plan would have applied tariffs of 10 to 25 percent on a wide range of goods, including soybeans, peanut butter and hair spray. Officials will now “take a bit of time to think, take a bit of time to analyze, take a bit of time to reflect,” Olof Gill, a spokesman for the European Commission, said at a news conference on Thursday.
White House officials had voiced optimism that Europe’s retaliation would not begin to kick in starting on April 15, as had been the original plan.
“I think what’s going to happen is they are going to be pushed out for the 90 days, so they have time to negotiate with the president without having something hanging over their head,” Howard Lutnick, the U.S. commerce secretary, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
European officials have been trying for weeks to convince their American counterparts to make a deal. Ms. von der Leyen has in recent days suggested repeatedly that both Europe and the U.S. should drop tariffs on industrial products, including cars, to zero.
“Tariffs are taxes that only hurt businesses and consumers,” she said in a statement on Wednesday. “That’s why I’ve consistently advocated for a zero-for-zero tariff agreement between the European Union and the United States.”
But she also underscored that Europe would continue its strategies of striking new trade alliances, deepening trade between nations and working on improving its own competitiveness, measures meant to make the bloc less reliant on an increasingly fickle United States.
“This crisis has made one thing clear,” she wrote. “In times of uncertainty, the single market is our anchor of stability and resilience.”
And even as Europe pushed pause, it was clear that officials were operating against a backdrop of uncertainty.
When asked which tariffs were delayed and which remained in play, Mr. Gill offered his best guess — that the car and metal tariffs would remain in place.
“Forgive me if I get this wrong,” he said. “Things are moving fast. At the moment, we’re all doing our best.”
