For months now officials at the highest level of the European Union have been quietly preparing for what to do if Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House.
The work has been overseen by Bjoern Seibert, who wields huge power in Brussels as Ursula von der Leyen’s closest adviser at the top of the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, which proposes laws and leads on trade policy.
Officials have been drawing up contingency plans for how the EU might respond to measures Trump has promised if he returns to power. The Republican Party candidate has talked about slapping tariffs of 10-20 per cent on all products imported into the US, hitting trade with economic allies and rivals alike.
As the EU’s largest trading partner, such a dramatic shift to introduce across-the-board tariffs on European exports would probably be hugely damaging.
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In anticipation of that, EU officials are looking at possible tariffs the bloc could levy on imports from the US. The idea is to be ready to respond quickly and forcefully, in the hopes of pushing a Trump administration to the negotiating table early and preventing a trade war. “It’s so we’re not on the back foot if Trump wins and announces something,” says a source close to Von der Leyen.
In recent weeks Seibert has briefed ambassadors from EU states on the commission’s thinking, but the granular detail has been kept under wraps.
During his first residency in the White House, Trump imposed high tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from the EU in 2018, which drew retaliatory measures from Brussels and led to a much more antagonistic transatlantic relationship.
[ ‘By the way, Nato is dead’: If Trump wins, Europe is on its ownOpens in new window ]
It was not until late 2021 that steel and other tariffs were paused by both sides, as part of a reset under Joe Biden’s presidency. Those tariffs have not been scrapped entirely, but instead suspended until March 2025, so a question mark remains over what will happen even if Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris wins on Tuesday.
A commission spokesman says it is preparing for all possible outcomes. “We are committed to maintaining a close partnership with the US, and we engage with US interlocutors and stakeholders on a bipartisan basis. The United States and the EU are and will remain close partners and allies.”
The plans being drawn up by senior EU officials also include assessments of how a second Trump presidency could affect European defence policy. The big concerns there are for the war in Ukraine and the Nato western military alliance.
On the campaign trail Trump has claimed he would be able to end the war between Russia and Ukraine in a day and bring both sides to the negotiating table. Supporters of Kyiv worry Trump may threaten to stop the huge flow of military aid to Ukraine, which alongside support from European allies, has sustained it on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.
Trump has also been very public about his long-standing grievances with Nato, arguing that other members of the alliance contribute too little when it comes to defence spending. The EU would face the prospect of having to plug a huge financial hole if Trump halted US support to Ukraine or pulled back commitments to Nato.
Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at Bruegel economic think tank, said such a scenario would also require Europe to seriously ramp up its own production of weapons and military hardware. “We are not really prepared ... We’re in for some rough times if he gets elected,” he says.
Wolff, who is also a professor of economics at Université libre de Bruxelles, says the fact the EU is still dependent on the US for security would weaken its hand in any confrontation over trade and tariffs.
Politically the EU has not been able to take the big decisions needed to allow it stand on its own two feet, he argues. “The majorities are very fragile everywhere, from France to Germany, so people are just hoping for the best instead of preparing for the worst,” he says.
[ European Union prepares two-step trade plan to tackle Donald TrumpOpens in new window ]
One commission official says it is helpful that Von der Leyen has five years under her belt in the top EU job. The fact the German politician has consolidated power around herself starting into her second term could prove useful if the EU needs to stand up to a Trump presidency, they say.
“We’ve been here before; it’s not our first rodeo,” says Daniel Mulhall, who served as Ireland’s ambassador to the US from 2017 to 2022. “It was difficult for the European Union but it wasn’t a disaster.”
The former diplomat says much would depend on how different a beast a second Trump term would be from the first, given some guard rails inside the US administration limited his impulses previously. “Last time around people around him were able to talk him down,” says Mulhall.
After that chaotic first term it took a while for relations between the US and Europe to get back on a friendly footing.
A “trade and technology council”, bringing senior politicians and officials from both sides together every few months, was an effort to mend bridges under the Biden presidency. At the last meeting of the forum earlier this year in Leuven, Belgium, the mood during a panel talk was chummy.
US secretary of commerce Gina Raimondo and trade envoy Katherine Tai were joined on stage by three senior EU commissioners: Margrethe Vestager, Thierry Breton and Valdis Dombrovskis. Both sides spoke about how far they felt they had come in building personal relationships with each other. Despite the laughs on stage, there was still a clear sense that the US and EU remained apart in some important areas, particularly on policy around state subsidies and tech regulation.
There is a view from some EU officials that the trade council has begun to veer into “talking shop” territory, rather than a space where political compromises between the two sides might be hammered out. Others say that puts too much expectation on the get-togethers to be something more than they were intended. “You’ve had really strong interactions at the senior political level. It doesn’t mean they’ve agreed on everything,” one US industry source says of the meetings.
The friendly banter probably won’t last if the US and EU find themselves pulling up the trade drawbridges and levelling tit-for-tat tariffs on goods being sold to each other in a few months’ time.
If Trump emerges as the winner after Tuesday, the question of what that means for Europe will dominate the discussion when the 27 EU leaders meet for a summit in Budapest later in the week.
The European Council meeting had been due to debate what the EU could do to make itself more economically competitive, to avoid falling further behind the US and China. How the national leaders answer that question will take on a lot more urgency if the EU is facing another four years of Trump in the White House.
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