Pedestrians shelter from the rain under umbrellas as they pass the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known by the name of the clock’s bell, “Big Ben”, at the Palace of Westminster, home to the Houses of Parliament, in London on February 22, 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Henry Nicholls | AFP | Getty Images<\/p>\n
LONDON \u2014 European equity markets opened broadly lower on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened “much higher” tariffs against the EU.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the opening bell, the pan-European Stoxx 600<\/a> was 0.8% lower, with all sectors and major regional bourses in negative territory. <\/p>\n In a Truth Social post on Thursday evening, Trump said he had been “waiting patiently for the EU to fulfill their side of the Historic Trade Deal” that was agreed last July, when the U.S. and the EU reached<\/a> a deal to lower tariffs on the European trading bloc from a threatened 30% to 15%. <\/p>\n In Thursday’s post, Trump said the EU had promised to “deliver their side of the deal” and cut their tariffs on American goods to zero. <\/p>\n “I agreed to give her until our Country’s 250th Birthday or, unfortunately, their Tariffs would immediately jump to much higher levels,” he said of a call with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.<\/p>\n In February, after Trump said he would impose a global blanket tariff of 15% after the Supreme Court struck down his reciprocal tariffs regime, a top EU trade lawmaker told<\/a> CNBC the U.S. had breached the terms of the deal “several times.” <\/p>\n Lawmakers in Brussels paused<\/a> a parliamentary vote on the trade deal following those threats from Trump, with one official lambasting the president’s move as “pure tariff chaos.”<\/p>\n