Current EU-US tariffs deal holds 'very little value' after latest announcements, says analyst

Описание: (23 Feb 2026)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rome, Italy - 23 February 2026
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Alberto Rizzi, Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations:
"Now the Trump (US President Donald Trump) administration has decided to use a different legal tool that allows to impose 15 percent maximum tariffs for a maximum of 150 days, but that has become the new global, in a way, so everybody is supposed to be tariffed in the same way, save for other tariffs on other grounds that are sector-specific or related to national security or unfair trade practices. So the EU that had negotiated last year a trade deal to have exactly a 15 percent tariff which was a debatable deal, but at least it was good if everybody else had 30, 40, 50, 60 percent tariff - now, it's in the same position of everybody else, regardless of the deal or not, and it doesn't really know whether this 15 percent is going to be accompanied by new specific tariffs decided by the administration or not."
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2. SOUNDBITE (English) Alberto Rizzi, Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations:
"I think that the EU mostly wants certainty in its trade relationship with the US and that the deal was providing exactly this in a very complex landscape and it provided the EU with some advantage compared to countries at higher tariffs. Now that advantage is gone and much of the certainty in the trade relationship is also gone. So there would be calls for renegotiation or agree a new framework with the United States, probably we are going to see some more engagement between the two sides to shape the future of the trade relationship. I don't know the extent to which a full renegotiation of the deal is possible, but at the same time, it's been clear from Trump's press conference after the Supreme Court decision that the United States don't see that 15% global tariff as their end goal, and there would be other measures to follow up. And (the) EU response is likely to depend a lot on those additional measures."
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3. SOUNDBITE (English) Alberto Rizzi, Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations:
"You can try to put a sort of a guardrail in the relationship to make sure that unpredictability doesn't develop too extensively, but there's very little predictability that we can have from this administration. And I'm also considering that we're heading to the midterm election, so a lot of the decisions that the White House would take are linked to what is going to happen in the polls in the United States."
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4. SOUNDBITE (English) Alberto Rizzi, Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations:
"if we look at the trade deal of last year, there were three points. One is the comparative advantage, one was the certainty and the third one was to keep the US engaged on Ukraine, at least from the EU side. The third element remains, but the first one is completely gone and the second one has been massively hollowed out. So many of the reasons that made a difficult deal palatable to the Europeans are not on the table anymore, which means it's going to be difficult to find adequate framework for the next deal or to safeguard most of this one. I don't think the EU is keen to discard it, but also sees now very little value in the deal that last year seemed a relatively good point."
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STORYLINE:

As Trump imposed tariffs at record high levels to countries over the globe, the EU negotiated a deal to 15% tariffs on its exported goods.















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