Let down by our oldest ally’

 

Let down by our oldest ally’

By Suzanne Lynch

16 mins read

April 3, 2025 7:03 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/let-down-by-our-oldest-ally/

Brussels Playbook

By SUZANNE LYNCH

 

with ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH

 

GOOD THURSDAY MORNING and welcome to Brussels Playbook. Suzanne Lynch here bringing you up to speed as Brussels, and the world, reels from last night’s tariff announcement from the White House.

 

“Let down by our oldest ally,” is how a stony-faced Ursula von der Leyen put it this morning in the first official EU response to the tariffs. We’ve got all the details below.

 

Sarah Wheaton will be holding the Playbook pen Friday morning.

 

DRIVING THE DAY: TARIFF BOMBSHELL 

LIBERATION DAY FALLOUT: Wednesday’s self-styled “Liberation Day” delivered a hammer blow to the global trading system, with the United States slapping a 10 percent minimum tariff on all imports coming into the country and higher levies on the EU and other top trading partners.

 

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Top lines: Imports from the EU will be hit with 20 percent tariffs, Trump announced. Dozens of other U.S. trade partners were also targeted, including China (34 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Japan (24 percent). The U.K., which doesn’t run the same gaping trade surplus in goods with the United States as the EU does, was stung with 10 percent, in line with Australia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, among others. (He’s also hitting remote islands with more penguins than people.)

 

Message from Uzbekistan: “I know that many of you feel let down by our oldest ally,” von der Leyen told Europeans in an early-morning statement from Uzbekistan where she’s attending the EU-Central Asia summit. Trump’s tariffs are “a major blow” that will lead to higher bills and rising inflation across the globe, the Commission chief warned.

 

Locked and loaded: The EU is “prepared to respond,” von der Leyen said, noting the Commission is finalizing its countermeasures in response to Trump’s steel tariffs and preparing others to hit back against the newest set of levies. “It is not too late to address concerns through negotiations,” she added. “Let’s move from confrontation to negotiation.”

 

Flashing red light: Von der Leyen warned of possible spillover from other markets — i.e. China. “We will also be watching closely what indirect effects these tariffs could have. Because we cannot absorb global overcapacity, nor will we accept dumping on our markets,” she said. (Taking into account previous actions, Beijing will face a massive 54 percent in tariffs and has vowed to retaliate.) Full write-up of VDL’s address here.

 

Bargain basement: Armed with color-coded charts, Trump had insisted in his Rose Garden press conference last night that the U.S. was in fact offering “discounted reciprocal rates” by taxing countries “half of what they are and have been charging us.” Trump’s full charts are here.

 

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” the president declared. He claimed that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”

 

Timing: The new 10 percent rate will come into effect on April 5, and the customized rates for the “worst offenders” (including the EU) take effect on April 9. Those are in addition to the previously announced 25 percent tax on car imports that come into effect today. A briefing document from the White House said pharmaceuticals are not included in the tariffs — but could be hit separately in coming weeks.

 

REACTION ROUNDUP: Seb Starcevic has a round-up of the European responses. Some highlights …

 

Sweden: In a video message last night, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said: “I deeply regret the path the U.S. has embarked upon … We don’t want growing trade barriers. We don’t want a trade war.” Kristersson added that Sweden is “well prepared for what’s happening.”

 

Italy‘s Giorgia Meloni said the tariffs were “wrong” but that Rome would do everything to work on an agreement with the U.S. with the aim of averting a trade war that would weaken the West in favor of other global players, Giovanna Faggionato reports. (Meloni’s got big problems of her own, as she strains to hold her coalition together. Big read here.)

 

Ireland, which runs a massive trade surplus in goods with the United States, also said it deeply regrets Trump’s approach. “We see no justification for this,” Taoiseach Micheál Martin said in a statement. “More than €4.2 billion worth of goods and services are traded between the EU and the U.S. daily. Disrupting this deeply integrated relationship benefits no one.”

 

More to come: German Economy Minister Robert Habeck will hold a press conference at 10:30 a.m. French President Emmanuel Macron is convening representatives from sectors impacted by the trade war at the Elysée, along with Prime Minister François Bayrou and government ministers, my colleague Giorgio Leali reports from Paris. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Brussels today for a NATO meeting (more below) and is due to speak to the press at 11:15 a.m.

 

Markets’ verdict: Amid fears the tariffs will drive up inflation and further slow growth, the U.S. stock-index futures plunged in after-hours trading, with tech firms like Apple and Amazon hardest hit, down over 4 percent. Asian markets also fell, with Japan’s Nikkei down 2.68 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng falling 1.16 percent in early trade and China’s CSI 300 down 0.48 percent.

 

HERE’S THE BEEF: The brutal tariffs aimed at the EU should come as no surprise — because for Trump and some members of his top team, this is personal, Playbook D.C.’s Managing Editor and Author Jack Blanchard says via email this morning. “I mean, European Union won’t take chicken from America!” explained an incredulous-sounding Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, on Fox News early this morning. “They hate our beef, because our beef is beautiful — and theirs is weak.”

 

DON’T FORGET TECH: As tech giants Apple and Meta brace for imminent action by the European Commission, the EU’s competition chief Teresa Ribera signaled that Brussels is prepared to come down hard in implementing EU tech rules, Francesca Micheletti reports. “Of course I’m going to be brave,” she said at an event in Washington when asked if she was in favor of strong enforcement of the EU’s Digital Markets Act. “I am bound by the law.”

 

Don’t hurt us: Ribera was speaking as one of Trump’s main antitrust enforcers, Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, unleashed a blistering attack on the EU’s tech laws, likening the DMA to a tax on U.S. companies. “I am very suspicious of laws that appear to have been written to get at American companies abroad,” Ferguson said.

 

ICYMI: Our Stateside colleague Rachael Bade had this humdinger of a scoop last night, reporting that Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back from his government role in the coming weeks. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to it as “garbage” in a social media post but did not dispute the reporting.

 

NATO MINISTERS MEET 

HAPPENING TODAY: As Europe responds to last night’s trade bombshell from Washington, another crack in the transatlantic alliance will be on full display at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where a two-day meeting of foreign ministers kicks off. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and EU High Representative Kaja Kallas are due to attend.

 

Rubio in town: All eyes will be on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is due to meet with NATO partners in his first visit to Brussels as Trump’s top diplomat. As Nick Vinocur and Jacopo Barigazzi write, both sides will do their best to smile for the cameras and promise that all is well in NATO. (The alliance’s boss Mark Rutte told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. is “completely committed to NATO.”) Behind the scenes, though, things are strained.

 

Conscious uncoupling: Though ministers will be at pains to paper over diverging views on Ukraine, Trump has lit a fire under the 75-year-old transatlantic alliance, from threatening to annex Greenland to reports suggesting the U.S. wants to start moving weapons systems from Europe to the Indo-Pacific region — and possibly even give up its military command of NATO in Europe.

 

Not for sale: Rubio will meet Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen today on the NATO sidelines, following Trump’s Greenland threats. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen touched down in the self-governing island’s capital Nuuk last night. While declining to weigh in on the Greenland sovereignty question, Rutte made the point Tuesday that NATO is becoming more involved in the Arctic region, noting China’s presence as sea lanes open up, and the practical challenges like NATO’s lack of ice-breakers.

 

Awkward: Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will also join today’s meeting — on his first visit to Brussels since the arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s political rival Ekrem İmamoğlu. The EU’s Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos told the European Parliament this week that she’s pulled out of the Antalya forum and won’t go to Ankara to meet Fidan because of the crackdown on Turkey’s opposition. Let’s see if there are any public rebukes at NATO headquarters.

 

Indo-Pacific: Also present over the next few days are representatives from the Indo-Pacific region, with Rutte due to meet bilaterally with Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya. The NATO leader said the focus will be on developing more practical cooperation between NATO allies and Indo-Pacific partners.

 

“We cannot look at NATO territory in isolation,” Rutte said Wednesday. “We know that all these theaters — the Indo-Pacific, the Euro-Atlantic, the Middle East … [are] getting more and more interconnected,” he added, highlighting North Korea’s, China’s and Iran’s involvement in the Ukraine war, as well as China’s build-up of forces and nuclear warheads.

 

ATHENS DOUBLES DOWN: Greece, already a big NATO spender, will shell out €25 billion as part of a 12-year defense strategy, in the “most drastic transformation in the history of the country’s armed forces,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced in parliament on Wednesday, Nektaria Stamouli reports.

 

NEW FACES: Today’s meeting will be the first for the new U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker. Britain’s new NATO ambassador, Angus Lapsley, presented his credentials this week. Lapsley is well known in NATO HQ, having served as assistant secretary-general for defense policy and planning at the alliance.

 

 

HUAWEI LATEST 

NEW REVELATIONS: Three Huawei employees and a managing director from well-known Brussels conference organizer Forum Europe were represented in court this week for hearings related to the corruption investigation into the Chinese tech giant’s lobbying in Europe, POLITICO’s Elisa Braun, Antoaneta Roussi and Mathieu Pollet report.

 

Reminder: Police raided more than 20 locations in Belgium and Portugal last month in an investigation into alleged illegal payments made by Huawei to secure an open letter signed by eight European lawmakers in support of the company’s interests, according to the Belgian prosecutor and an arrest warrant seen by POLITICO. Five people were charged as part of the investigation, prosecutors said on March 18.

 

Details: According to a court timetable seen by POLITICO at the Brussels Palace of Justice, the suspects include a lobbyist from Huawei as well as a senior executive and a procurement manager of the Chinese tech firm. The higher-profile Huawei employees can be named as Han W. and Valerio O.

 

Two other defendants are contractors, including one from Forum Europe who is charged with “active corruption of a person holding a public office in an organization governed by public international law,” according to the timetable. Forum Europe said in an email: “We do not have any comment at this time.”

 

Going cheap: The arrest warrant, which POLITICO reported on last week, included details from Belgian prosecutors alleging the key suspects may have facilitated the payments for the pro-Huawei letter. “A sum of €15,000 was offered to the writer of the 5G letter, while each co-signatory was offered €1,500,” the warrant says. All this and more here.

 

PARLIAMENT CRACKS DOWN: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola told lawmakers that the institution’s computer networks don’t use Huawei infrastructure, Max Griera reports. She has also instructed IT services “to maintain this practice and to mitigate any other potential risks linked to Huawei devices” as a precautionary measure, according to an email to MEPs seen by POLITICO. Huawei lobbyists have also been banned from the Parliament’s premises, Metsola said, as first reported by POLITICO.

 

Call for calm: “I want to emphasize the importance of fact-based, studied, informed decision-making in the face of incidents like these,” Metsola said. MEPs had asked the president to sideline peers suspected of being involved in the Huawei scheme, although they haven’t been formally indicted.

 

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