Gripping the new normal How arbitrary US trade policy is embedding crisis

It was grip-and-grin time for Ursula von der Leyen as she sat across from Donald Trump in Scotland last week, with the two announcing a deal for 15% tariffs on European imports that would avert a trade war – but came at a stiff price for the 27-country bloc.

- Andrew Roth

After committing to a unilateral raise by the US on tariffs that followed a Nato commitment to increase defence spending to 5% of national GDPs, von der Leyen then thanked Trump "for his personal commitment and his leadership to achieve this breakthrough".

"He is a tough negotiator, but he is also a dealmaker," she said, as the US president beamed.

The EU was one of just a number of parties to strike a deal with Trump before his pause on new tariffs came to an end this week.

And like many others, the guiding principle for the EU appeared to be: it can always get worse.

"This is clearly the best deal we could get under very difficult circumstances," Maroš Šefčovič, the EU trade chief, said.

Others had a far bleaker interpretation of the dynamics as the US president has threatened sky-high tariffs to cudgel his trading partners into submission.

"It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission," wrote the French prime minister, François Bayrou.