EU loses patience following Trump’s latest tariff threat

 

EU loses patience following Trump’s latest tariff threat

 

European Commission demands “full clarity” on Washington’s plans, as a top EU trade lawmaker calls to delay a key vote on EU-U.S. trade deal.

 

February 22, 2026 2:21 pm CET

By Camille Gijs

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-parliament-delay-trade-vote-donald-trump-tariffs/

 

BRUSSELS — The European Union is pushing Washington to clarify how the United States will proceed after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, the EU executive said on Sunday.

 

“The European Commission requests full clarity on the steps the United States intends to take following the recent Supreme Court ruling on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA),” the Commission said in a strongly worded statement issued after Trump announced Saturday he wants to impose a new global tariff rate of 15 percent.

 

“The current situation is not conducive to delivering ‘fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial’ transatlantic trade and investment,” the Commission said.

 

EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič spoke with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Saturday, as the EU grapples with the uncertainty of whether its trade agreement struck in Scotland last summer still applies in light of Trump’s latest tariff threats.

 

The quickly evolving situation pushed a senior EU trade lawmaker to urge the European Parliament to postpone a vote on legislation implementing the EU’s side of its transatlantic trade deal.

 

Trump's imposition of a 15 percent global tariff following Friday’s high court defeat is “a clear breach of the deal we had agreed,” Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, told POLITICO on Sunday. “I will therefore propose that we suspend ratification of the agreement for the time being,” he said.

 

Lange said he could not rule out “renegotiating the agreement.”

 

The German Social Democrat earlier Sunday decried “pure tariff chaos from the U.S. administration,” in a social media post. “No one can make sense of it anymore — only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other U.S. trading partners,” he wrote.

 

The terms of Turnberry Agreement and the “legal basis on which it was built have changed,” Lange said in the post on X. “Do new tariffs based on Section 122 not constitute a breach of the deal? Regardless, no one knows whether the U.S. will adhere to it — or even be able to,” he added in his post.

 

“At our extra meeting tomorrow, I will therefore propose to the EP-negotiating team putting legislative work on hold until we have a proper legal assessment and clear commitments from the U.S. side,” Lange said.

 

All change

One day after the Supreme Court struck down his signature tariff policy, Trump on Saturday announced he plans a new global tariff rate of 15 percent, lifting the rate from 10 percent.

 

To do so, he invoked Section 122 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs up to 15 percent to address a “large and serious balance-of-payment deficit” that can remain in effect for no more than 150 days unless the U.S. Congress authorizes an extension.

 

The temporary U.S. tariff regime would significantly ease the burden on Brazil, China and India. But it would increase it on the EU by an estimated 0.8 percentage point to an effective rate of 12.5 percent, according to an analysis by Global Trade Alert.

 

The vote in the European Parliament, scheduled for Tuesday, is meant to confirm the institution's position on a law that removes tariffs on U.S. industrial goods and lobster — a key plank of EU pledges under a deal struck at Trump's Turnberry golf resort last summer.

 

The delay proposed by Lange will have to garner support among the EU's political groups during an extraordinary meeting set for Monday afternoon.

 

The Greens, via their lead lawmaker on the file Anna Cavazzini, said: "The vote on the Turnberry Agreement in the European Parliament should be paused until we have clarity."

 

"It was clear that Trump's tariffs were illegal under international law. Now we also have confirmation that they were also illegal under U.S. law," she said in a statement on Friday.

 

Hans Joachim Von Der Burchard contributed reporting.

 

This story has been updated.