“What we did in 2018 was targeting products that don’t hurt us, but hurt them,” said Demarty, who also worked as economic adviser to Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission president at the time.
“Politically symbolic products: Harley-Davidson, bourbon whiskey, corn. I was the one who personally added these products back then. My troops were totally tetanized at the idea of adding such sensitive products,” he added.
Another possible leverage is the EU’s regulatory arsenal, especially the bloc’s grip on Big Tech. It’s an area where Washington has skin in the game, with Elon Musk’s X or Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta in the EU’s crosshairs over the tech giants’ content regulation and sharing of data with authorities.
As the world’s largest exporter of services, the U.S. could be a prime target for EU retaliation. Here, Brussels could add restrictions on American consulting and financial firms, revoking intellectual property rights, further restricting data flows, or increasing digital taxes on U.S.-based platforms.
The long game
It was with a Trump 2.0 scenario in mind that the European Commission devised a way to hit back if one of its member states were subjected to economic blackmail, its Anti-Coercion Instrument.
“We now see in this Trump administration that coercion may become a standard form of behavior in U.S. trade policy,” said Ignacio García Bercero, who was the Commission’s point person on U.S. trade during Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021.