President Trump is meeting on Monday with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer during the U.S. leader’s visit to Scotland. While ostensibly a private trip, marked by multiple rounds of golf on his own luxury courses, Mr. Trump has also done some business — including nailing down a long-sought-after U.S.-European Union trade agreement.
After meeting for just over one hour with EU leader Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday, Mr. Trump emerged to say, “We have good news. We’ve reached a deal.”
When considered as a combined economy, the EU bloc is the second largest in the world behind the U.S. Including goods and services, U.S.-EU trade is worth about $2 trillion per year.
“I think it’s great that we made a deal today, instead of playing games,” Mr. Trump said of the framework agreement. “I think it’s the biggest deal ever made.”
“It’s a big deal, it’s a huge deal,” agreed von der Leyen. “It will bring stability. It will bring predictability.”
President Trump’s meeting Starmer was also expected to touch on trade, though the U.S. and the U.K. already agreed a framework trade deal last month. Starmer has made it clear he wants to keep pushing Mr. Trump to further ease tariffs on British steel and other imports as the details of the agreement are hashed out.
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Both U.S. and U.K. officials said the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine would also come up in their discussion on Monday.
Ahead of the meeting, Mr. Trump told reporters he would likely reduce the 50-day deadline he gave to Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire deal with Ukraine before he imposes new sanctions against Russia.
Mr. Trump didn’t specify how much he would reduce the timeline, but said he was “very disappointed” in Putin for continuing to attack Ukraine. Russia rejected the deadline when the White House first announced it, calling it “unacceptable.”
But Mr. Trump said his meeting with Starmer would provide a chance to celebrate the U.S.-U.K. trade agreement now on the books, along with the new EU deal.
Most EU member nations’ governments voiced support for that agreement on Monday, though some of them unenthusiastically – and the French Prime Minister even took a jab at the bloc, accusing it of “submission” to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump said the tariff rate for the EU’s 27 member countries would be 15% for most imports, including vehicles. The EU, meanwhile, agreed to purchase U.S. military hardware, $750 billion of American energy, and to increase its collective investment in the U.S. by $600 billion.
There’s was good news for U.S. companies that sell products into the EU market, too, as Mr. Trump announced that all 27 EU nations “will be opened up to trade with the United States at zero tariff.”
The agreement was made at Trump’s luxury golf resort in Turnberry, on the Scottish coast, where the president spent the weekend teeing off.
The deal avoids a trans-Atlantic trade war that could have unfolded on Friday, when Mr. Trump had threatened to impose a blanket 30% tariff on all goods imported from the EU, which had vowed to retaliate.
That deadline remains in place for countries that have yet to make a deal with the U.S., including Mexico, Canada, and most consequentially, China.
Trade talks between Beijing and Washington were taking place Monday in Stockholm, and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in interviews over the weekend that the Aug. 1 deadline for deals to be reached wasn’t flexible.
“No extensions, no more grace periods. August 1, the tariffs are set. They’ll go into place. Customs will start collecting the money, and off we go,” he said.
