As reported in the New York Times yesterday, the EU’s trading relationship with China is increasingly tense.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/world/europe/european-union-china-tariffs.html.

Many factors contribute to this, including China’s unfair trade barriers, and its support for Russian in its war against Ukraine.

It will indeed be unfortunate if the Trump administration continues with its adversarial relationship with the EU, and thereby misses an opportunity to significantly add to its leverage in trade negotiations with the Chinese.  If the world’s largest economy (the US) were fully allied with the world’s third largest economy (the EU) in the effort to forge concessions by China, this would be a huge advantage.

Adding Canada, and Asian economic powers like Japan and South Korea to such a joint effort would perhaps force the Chinese even further toward the US’s position on Chinese trade practices.

Unfortunately, to date Trump seems to lump our trading allies, including the EU into the same category as China when it comes to countries who are “taking advantage of” the US.  Trump is not known for subtleties and nuances in such matters, but if he continues on this path it will be to our disadvantage.

It has been reported that the Trump administration expects to sign some sort of deal with the EU this week.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/07/06/us-eu-trade-deal-talks/.

Previous deals announced by the Trump administration have proven to be no more than broad frameworks with few details.  We can only hope that common sense ultimately will prevail so that, if there is a deal in the offing, it will reduce animosity to the point where the EU and US can coordinate efforts to get China to adhere to reasonable standards of mutual fair trade.