The European Union must address its “internal” divisions before seeking to negotiate a deal with the United States to avoid Donald Trump’s tariffs, a senior US official has said.

“My observation… goes all the way back to [former US Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger’s statement: ‘When I call Europe, who do I call?’” Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, told reporters in Washington on Tuesday. “So, we’re negotiating with a lot of different interests.”

Bessent cited EU countries’ varying approaches to the taxation of digital services as evidence of the bloc’s divisions. He added that some European countries, such as France and Italy, impose such levies on US tech firms while others, like Germany, do not.

“We want to see that unfair tax on one of America’s great industries removed,” Bessent said. “So it’s going to be a give-and-take. So they [the EU] have some internal matters to decide before they can engage in an external negotiation.”

The European Commission, which oversees the bloc’s trade policy, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bessent’s comments come amid growing fears that Trump could seek to divide the EU by negotiating trade deals with individual member states.

Trump has repeatedly condemned Brussels’ taxation and antitrust probes of US tech firms including Google, Apple, and Meta since his return to the White House in January.

The self-proclaimed ‘Tariff Man’ has also denounced the EU’s “very nasty” trade surplus in goods with the US, which he claims amounts to $350 billion (€307 billion).

The EU ran a surplus in goods of €157 billion with the US in 2023 but a deficit in services of €109 billion, according to the Commission.

In recent weeks Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on steel, aluminium, and cars, along with a 10% “universal” levy on other US imports. He has also repeatedly threatened to impose additional sector-specific levies on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and lumber.

The EU suspended levies on €21 billion worth of US goods earlier this month after Trump announced a 90-day “pause” on sweeping “reciprocal tariffs”, which included a 20% duty on all EU goods.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Brussels could introduce levies on US tech firms’ advertising revenue if trade negotiations with the US “are not satisfactory”.

Von der Leyen also emphasised that the Commission would not revise its “untouchable” Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, which govern digital competition rules and content, respectively, across the EU’s single market.

Retaliating against US digital services has split Germany and France, the EU’s two largest economies and traditional agenda-setters.

Paris has lobbied hard for the Commission to retaliate against US digital services while Berlin has warned that Europe “has no real alternatives to the offering” of US tech firms.

Last week, the European Commission fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for antitrust violations: the first-ever penalties to be issued under the DMA.

(om)