Updated May 26, 2025 09:36 IST
US President Donald Trump (Image: Reuters/ETNOW.in)
During the conversation, Leyen told Trump that she wants to get down to serious negotiations, reports AP. I told anybody that would listen, they have to do that, Trump told reporters on Sunday in Morristown, New Jersey, as he prepared to return to Washington. Von der Leyen, Trump said, vowed to rapidly get together and see if we can work something out, reports AP.
Last week, the US President had threatened to impose a 50 per cent tariff on EU goods, complaining that the 27-member bloc had been very difficult to deal with on trade and that negotiations were going nowhere. Those tariffs would have kicked in starting June 1.
According to AP report, the core of Trump’s argument against the EU is that America runs a totally unacceptable trade deficit with the 27 member states. Countries run trade deficits when they import more goods than they export.
From the vantage point of the EU’s executive commission, trade with the U.S. is roughly in balance if both goods and services are included. As a global center for finance and technology, the U.S. runs a trade surplus in services with Europe. That offsets some of the trade gap in goods and puts the imbalance at 48 billion euros ($54 billion), reports AP.
(With inputs from AP)
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