European leaders vowed on Tuesday to retaliate after President Trump raised tariffs on aluminum and steel to 25 percent, even as they held out hope that they would be able to negotiate a deal with the United States.
European Union officials have argued that Europe and the United States are deeply intertwined and that igniting a trade war would hurt both sides. But they have also been quietly preparing to hit back against possible U.S. tariffs, and have said they are ready to enact countermeasures if no trade solution can be found.
“Unjustified tariffs on the E.U. will not go unanswered — they will trigger firm and proportionate countermeasures,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, said in a statement.
Maroš Šefčovič, the E.U. commissioner charged with trade and economic security, told members of the European Parliament on Tuesday that the new U.S. tariffs were “a lose-lose scenario,” adding that the “time has come” for a European response.
“We are currently assessing the scope of the measures announced overnight and will be responding in a firm and proportionate way by counter measures,” he said.
Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. worked out an agreement with European leaders in 2021 that allowed specific amounts of steel and aluminum to enter the United States free of tariffs. The deal was extended in 2023 and was to stay in force until the end of this year.
According to the U.S. Commerce Department, the United States imported about 4 million metric tons of steel products and 283,000 metric tons of aluminum products from the European Union in 2022. Germany is the largest European exporter of steel to the United States, followed by Italy and Spain.
Europe is expected to tighten its safeguards for its domestic steel industry, but the timing of the response remained uncertain on Tuesday.
“We are not in a position yet to say exactly when we will be responding, very concretely,” Paula Pinho, the E.U.’s chief spokeswoman, said during a news conference on Tuesday.
For Europe, the steel and aluminum tariffs are only the first shoe to drop. Mr. Trump has made it clear in recent days that he could announce more wide-ranging “reciprocal” tariffs as early as Tuesday. Those would be likely to affect the European Union, potentially seeking to equalize tariff rates between the two economies on key products like cars.
“It seems likely that a reciprocal tariff would equalize auto tariffs — this would be aimed mainly at the E.U., which has a 10 percent tariff on cars,” economists at Goldman Sachs wrote in a research note on Tuesday. E.U. officials have already suggested that they might consider lowering tariffs on cars.
