The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has achieved a Pyrrhic victory with the tariff agreement reached with US President Donald Trump, in a Scottish golf club on the last Sunday of July 2025. Although the pact can reinforce its internal position, it does not represent a real benefit for the European Union and compromises its future negotiating capacity.
It is paradigmatic and symbolic that the agreement has been signed in the United Kingdom, which the EU left five years ago and continues to suffer the negative commercial effects of this exit, which underlines the ongoing geopolitical fragmentation.
Under the pact, the United States maintains 15 % tariffs on most imports from the EU. In return, Europe renounces responding with reprisals and can avoid the entry into force of 30 %tariffs, announced by Trump for August 1.
A pact with a high cost for the EU
Both parties will attempt politically this pact that, in reality, is a loss of well -being for citizens on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the cost for Europe is double: renounces its ability to respond to US attacks on free trade and multilateralism, and shows its strategic weakness for future negotiations, which will predictably arrive. In addition, give a letter of nature to Trump’s narrative and accepts a tariff of (Link: external ||| https: //www.lavanguardia.com/economia/20250728/10928248/ue-acpta-arances-15-cerrar-guerra-comercial-ee-uu.html ||| 50 % European steel and aluminum exports)).
From a purely economic perspective, the EU had room to negotiate in better terms. Welfare losses derived from US tariffs are not especially high: various analyzes estimate an impact of just two or three tenths of European GDP. A moderate fall, easily compensable by impulseing new trade agreements already underway with Australia, India or Mercosur.
The disputes will continue, the EU must be prepared quickly
On the contrary, the Trump administration can present the pact as a great strategic victory. It reinforces its confrontational narrative and validates its global commercial fragmentation policy, which the EU seems to have assumed by signing an agreement that undermines its principles.
This agreement does not imply the end of commercial disputes between the United States and Europe. There will be additional pressures in concrete sectors (aeronautical, pharmaceutical, semiconductors, defense, energy, etc.). Rather, the beginning of a new stage is agreed, in which multilateralism and free trade that had been promoted by the Second World War, and the confrontation is politically beneficial for Trump is dispensed with.
Other confrontation areas
On the financial level, the dollar is losing peso as an international reference currency, which represents an opportunity for the euro to reinforce its global position.
In the technological field, the EU needs to rethink and reactivate its industrial policy, taking advantage of this impulse to regulate the power of large technological platforms and promote data and information that really benefits citizens. This does not always imply restricting its use, but ensuring that they are used with transparency and value generation criteria for citizens.
In the fiscal field, it is essential to advance in the right imposition to large corporations, establish their own European resources and consolidate common financing instruments. Autonomy and security strategies in the international are also reviewed.
The EU must reinforce its negotiating capacity to become a global counterweight, guided by democratic values, against the short -term international vision that embodies the presidency of Donald Trump.
But, above all, Europe must be optimistic and proactive in relation to its ability to face the challenges posed by the new international context.
Juan de Lucio, researcher – professor. Economist, University of Alcalá
This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original.
