President Trump announced Sunday that the United States and the European Union had reached a trade deal after high-stakes meetings in Scotland, just days shy of Friday’s White House deadline to enact tariffs.
Mr. Trump met with top European officials demanding fairer trade with the 27-member European Union at his golf course on the Scottish coast.
“It was a very interesting negotiation. I think it’s going to be great for both parties,” the president said.
The deal, according to European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, is a 15% tariff across the board. She praised Mr. Trump, calling it a “good deal” and a “huge deal” that followed “tough negotiations.”
“We have a deal. We have a trade deal between the two largest economies in the world, and it’s a big deal, it’s a huge deal,” she said. “It will bring stability. It will bring predictability.”
Jacquelyn Martin / AP
Mr. Trump said, “I think we both wanted to make a deal,” and he predicted it would “bring us closer together.” Mr. Trump also said more than once to reporters Sunday that it was the “biggest of all the deals.”
Von der Leyen said the negotiations addressed the EU’s trade surplus with the U.S., and the deal would be carried out in a way that would enable trade to continue while jobs on “both sides of the Atlantic” would be rebalanced.
According to Mr. Trump, the deal also includes that all European Union countries will be “opened up for U.S. goods” at 0% and the bloc will invest $600 billion in the U.S. The EU will also purchase $750 billion of U.S. energy as part of the deal.
“They are going to agree to invest into the United States $600 billion more than they’re investing already,” Mr. Trump said. “So they’re investing a large amount of money. You know what that amount of money is–It’s very substantial.”
In remarks before the session, Mr. Trump pledged to change what he characterized as “a very one-sided transaction, very unfair to the United States.”
“I think the main sticking point is fairness,” he said while also noting, “We’ve had a hard time with trade with Europe, a very hard time.”
Jacquelyn Martin / AP 
Without a deal, Mr. Trump had threatened to hit imports from the EU‘s 27 member countries with a 30% tariff rate. The president has long been critical of the U.S.-EU trade relationship, claiming the U.S. has been treated unfairly. Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with the EU was about $235 billion.
Joining von der Leyen were Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s chief trade negotiator; Björn Seibert, the head of von der Leyen’s Cabinet; Sabine Weyand, the commission’s directorate-general for trade, and Tomas Baert, head of trade and agriculture at the EU’s delegation to the U.S.
Von der Leyen had a mandate to negotiate because the European Commission handles trade for member countries. But the Commission should now present the deal to member states and EU lawmakers — who will ultimately decide whether or not to approve it
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Sunday welcomed the trade deal, which he said avoided “needless escalation in transatlantic trade relations.”
“We have thus managed to preserve our fundamental interests, even if I would have wished for more relief in transatlantic trade,” he said in a statement released soon after the deal was announced.
contributed to this report.
