In Brussels’ corridors of power, quiet optimism is growing that the EU’s hardball strategy to secure a US trade deal is working. While Britain quickly moved to try to cushion the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs with a deal agreed last month – and US-Chinese relations are a tit-for-tat situation – the EU has taken a different stance. “We are positioning ourselves between ‘rollover UK’ and ‘retaliatory China’,” said a Brussels source.
The stakes are not just the £706bn in transatlantic trade between the EU and US but the fallout from what diplomats and businesses say is a dangerous assault on the global rules-based system that governs western democracy.
