EU moves to scrap U.S. import duties, seeks tariff safeguards

Brussels moved Tuesday to strip import duties from U.S. goods, a step meant to lock in last summer’s trade bargain and blunt President Donald Trump’s threat of steeper tariffs. The push shows how leverage now runs through Washington and Brussels at the same time: the European Union wants relief from tariff brinkmanship, but it also wants legal guardrails before it gives away bargaining power.

The plan would carry out the outline agreed at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last July, when the EU committed to remove duties on U.S. industrial goods and open preferential access for American farm and sea produce. In return, the United States agreed to hold tariffs at 15% on most EU goods. For U.S. exporters, the biggest immediate winners would be industrial manufacturers, farmers and seafood suppliers selling into the European market. For American consumers, the benefit would be indirect at best. Lower EU duties do not cut prices at U.S. checkout counters; they mainly make U.S. goods more competitive abroad.

The stakes are unusually high. The European Commission says the EU-U.S. trade and investment relationship is the world’s most important bilateral one, with €1.6 trillion in goods and services trade in 2024, more than €4.2 billion crossing the Atlantic every day, and €5.3 trillion in total investments by EU and U.S. firms in 2022. That scale helps explain why the dispute is not just about tariffs on paper. It is about whether the two sides can preserve predictability in the face of election-year pressure, trade probes and another round of tariff threats.

The European Parliament approved the deal on March 26, 2026 by 417 votes to 154, with 71 abstentions, but it attached conditions that still need approval from EU governments before duties on U.S. products can fall to zero. Lawmakers inserted a sunrise clause, which would make tariff preferences conditional on U.S. compliance, a sunset clause expiring on March 31, 2028, and a suspension clause if Washington imposes new tariffs or otherwise breaks the agreement. Bernd Lange and Roberta Metsola both backed the safeguards as protection against renewed U.S. pressure.

That fight over wording now matters as much as the tariff rates themselves. The White House has described the deal differently, saying the EU will buy $750 billion of U.S. energy and invest $600 billion in the United States by 2028. However the final text reads, the message from Brussels is clear: Europe wants the deal, but it no longer intends to trust Washington without legal escape hatches.