‘I’m not
looking for a deal’: Trump revives global trade war
The
president vowed to hit the European Union and phone manufacturers with new
tariffs.
By Myah Ward
and Adam Cancryn
05/23/2025
05:30 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/23/trump-global-trade-war-apple-eu-00368401
President
Donald Trump’s moves Friday to reignite his global trade war laid bare the
administration’s bubbling frustration with resistance from both corporations
and foreign countries unwilling to rapidly bow to U.S. demands.
After weeks
of touting post-Liberation Day efforts to calm uneasy markets, Trump vowed to
target the European Union with new 50 percent tariffs, declaring that he was no
longer interested in reaching a trade deal following days of sluggish
negotiations.
“It’s time
that we play the game the way I know how to play the game,” Trump told
reporters in the Oval Office. “I’m not looking for a deal. We’ve set the deal —
it’s at 50 percent.”
The White
House will also move ahead with fresh 25 percent tariffs on phone manufacturers
in an effort to punish tech giant Apple for declining to make its iPhones
exclusively in the U.S., Trump said.
The abrupt
decisions underscored the intensifying pressure Trump faces to cut dozens of
trade deals before a self-imposed July deadline that White House officials once
suggested the administration would easily meet. The president has reserved much
of his ire for the European Union, the 27-country bloc that represents the
administration’s biggest trade target — yet also perhaps its most difficult.
“Trump is
frustrated that the Europeans aren’t rushing to the negotiating table,” said
Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to Trump. The president’s actions
today are “meant to get them to act.”
The trade
threats, which roiled markets in the U.S. and abroad, came after Trump in a
pair of Truth Social posts earlier Friday accused the EU of being “very
difficult to deal with” and Apple CEO Tim Cook of failing to cooperate by
shifting more of the company’s manufacturing to the United States.
The White
House has insisted in recent days that its aggressive trade strategy is
working, pointing to a preliminary agreement with the U.K. earlier this month
as evidence that it could quickly cut favorable trade deals and bolster the
economy.
But progress
since then has been slow, magnifying concerns that the approach risks
destabilizing the financial markets and further damaging Trump’s approval
ratings. In a Marquette University Law School poll earlier this week, just 37
percent of Americans said they approved of the president’s tariff policies.
The United
States and the EU have one of the biggest and broadest economic relations in
the world in terms of trade and investment, and EU leaders have warned on
multiple occasions they are prepared to retaliate if a fair deal can’t be
quickly struck.
Last year,
the United States imported $576 billion worth of goods from the 27 nations of
the European Union and exported $367 billion worth of product across the
Atlantic. That resulted in a U.S. trade deficit of $208 billion, one of the
largest in the world and Trump’s primary motivation for threatening the EU with
tariffs.
Trump
officials have been locked in trade negotiations with their EU counterparts for
weeks, irritating U.S. officials who have complained that the group’s
leadership is bogging down the talks.
The “EU has
a collective action problem here,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox
News on Friday, accusing its leadership of keeping member nations in the dark.
“Some of the feedback that I’ve been getting is that the underlying countries
don’t even know what the EU is negotiating on their behalf.”
He added in
a separate Bloomberg TV interview that agreements with “several” trading
partners could be struck in the next two weeks, but that Trump’s 90-day pause
on some tariffs was “contingent on countries or trading blocs coming and
negotiating in good faith.”
Trump’s
initial Truth Social threat sought to ramp up the pressure on the EU to strike
a deal, coming just hours before U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were set to speak with European Union trade
chief Maros Sefcovic.
But later in
the Oval Office, the president suggested he’d grown fed up with the process.
“I’m sure
now the European Union wants to make a deal very badly,” he said. “But they
just don’t go about it right.”
After the
call with Trump administration officials, Sefcovic said the EU is “fully
engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both.” He said the
countries’ trade is “unmatched,” and “must be guided by mutual respect, not
threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”
The White
House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s
rhetoric is likely to further escalate tensions with one of the U.S.’s biggest
and most complex trading partners, just weeks before he is expected to meet
with leaders of the Group of Seven nations, which includes the EU as well as
European allies like France, Italy and Germany.
A meeting of
G7 finance ministers earlier this week concluded with a vague joint statement
that only mentioned “trade” once and omitted any mention of tariffs, despite
days of discussions centered largely on hashing out the implications of Trump’s
trade war.
The U.S.
signed onto that joint statement. But Bessent, who represented the Trump
administration at the G7 meeting, said Friday that he hoped Trump’s post would
“light a fire under the EU.”
The promise
of new tariffs on smartphone makers, meanwhile, opens a fresh front in the
administration’s multilayered trade war. Trump initially said he would impose
new levies on Apple for shifting more of its iPhone production from China to
India — defying pressure from Trump to instead move all of its manufacturing
into the U.S.
But the
president later said the tariffs would apply to a broader range of companies to
include “Samsung and anybody that makes that product.”
The Apple
CEO had made a concerted effort in recent months to build a close relationship
with Trump, speaking with him frequently and pledging in February to invest
more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. Cook was also at
the White House this week, Bessent said. But Trump — whose iPhone went off
repeatedly while talking with reporters on Friday — has bristled at the tech
giant’s plan to move more manufacturing to India, saying last week that he “had
a little problem with Tim Cook” over it.
“I said to
him, ‘Tim, you’re my friend. I treated you very good. You’re coming in with
$500 billion.’ But now I hear you’re building all over India,” Trump said
during a stop in Qatar on his trip to the Middle East. “I don’t want you
building in India.’”
Underscoring
the economic uncertainty caused by the tariff war, financial markets in Europe
and the U.S. dropped sharply following Trump’s posts, as investors scrambled to
decode the president’s threats and its economic implications.
The White
House earlier this month touted a preliminary trade agreement with the United
Kingdom to lower tariffs on both sides, and officials have continued to
highlight progress in its negotiations with other trading partners. Despite
Trump aides’ signals that more deals should be coming soon, the president and
his top officials have begun to acknowledge the slow nature of negotiations —
suggesting new tariff rates could be coming when the so-called reciprocal
tariffs return on July 9 after the president’s pause lifts.
“We have…
150 countries that want to make a deal,” Trump said while in the United Arab
Emirates last week. “But you’re not able to see that many countries.”
Doug Palmer
contributed to this report.
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