American Allies Want to Redraw the World’s Trade Map, Minus the U.S. (New York Times July 13, 2025
Facing growing chaos, the European Union and numerous other countries are seeking to forge a global trading nexus that is less vulnerable to American tariffs.
Trade chaos is forcing America’s allies closer together, and further from the United States. And as that happens, the European Union is trying to position itself at the center of a new global trade map.
The bloc learned this weekend that Washington would subject it to 30 percent tariffs starting Aug. 1. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive branch, responded with a pledge to keep negotiating. She also made it clear that, while the European Union would delay any retaliation until early August, it would continue to draw up plans to hit back with force.
But that was not the entire strategy. Europe, like many of the United States’ trading partners, is also looking for more reliable friends.
“We’re living in turbulent times, and when economic uncertainty meets geopolitical volatility, partners like us must come closer together,” Ms. von der Leyen said on Sunday in Brussels at a news conference alongside the Indonesian president, Prabowo Subianto.
Just as President Trump threatens to put hefty tariffs on many countries, including Indonesia, the European Union is working to relax trade barriers and deepen economic relations.
“In hard times, some turn inward, toward isolation and fragmentation,” Ms. von der Leyen said. Then, in a message implicitly extended to world leaders who have been jolted by Mr. Trump’s tariffs, she added, “You are always welcome here, and you can count on Europe.”
It is a split screen that is becoming typical. On one side, the United States sows uncertainty as it blows up weeks of painstaking negotiations and escalates tariff threats. On the other, the 27-nation European Union and other American trading partners are forging closer ties, laying the groundwork for a global trading system that revolves less and less around an increasingly fickle United States.
“We in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, we really consider Europe to be very, very important in providing global stability,” Mr. Prabowo said on Sunday.
It will be hard to move away from the United States, and Mr. Prabowo predicted that America would always be a world leader. It is home to the world’s largest economy, a bustling consumer market and cutting-edge technologies and services.
But many American trading partners feel that they are left with little choice but to diversify. And while trade relationships are difficult to alter, they are also difficult to change back once they have been totally reorganized.
That is what is happening right now.
E.U. negotiators had engaged in months of back-and-forth with their U.S. counterparts before Mr. Trump’s announcement. And until the middle of the week, Brussels hoped that it was closing in on at least the framework for a deal: The European Union would accept a base tariff of 10 percent, but it would also push for carve-outs for key sectors.
Instead, Mr. Trump began hinting on Thursday that the bloc — one of America’s most important trading partners — would receive a letter setting out a sweeping, across-the-board tariff rate.
The White House officially notified E.U. officials on Friday that their carefully drawn plans had blown up. And on Saturday, the public learned from Mr. Trump’s social media account that the bloc would be subject to a 30 percent rate.
Mr. Trump simultaneously announced that he would place a similar tariff on goods from Mexico. Canada’s rate is slightly higher, at 35 percent. The likes of Thailand (35 percent), Bangladesh (35 percent) and Brazil (50 percent), along with dozens of other U.S. trading partners, appear to be headed for a similar fate.
Mr. Trump has backed down from threatened tariffs before, and he has indicated a willingness to negotiate these tariffs down before their Aug. 1 effective date — and the European Union and other economies are poised to continue with negotiations.
But the atmosphere is increasingly hostile.
Mr. Trump is “instrumentalizing uncertainty” to try to force trading partners to make concessions, said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia group, calling the latest announcements a “complete move of the goal posts.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement on Saturday sharply intensified calls in Europe for forceful retaliation.
“Trump is trying to divide and scare Europe,” said Brando Benifei, who heads the delegation for relations with the United States at the European Parliament.
But Ms. von der Leyen announced on Sunday that the bloc would wait until early August to allow ready-made retaliatory tariffs to kick in. Those tariffs cover nearly $25 billion of goods. They had already been suspended once and had been poised to take effect early on Tuesday morning.
“At the same time, we will continue to prepare further countermeasures,” Ms. von der Leyen said.
Hitting back would be just a first step; drawing closer to outside allies may prove even more meaningful in the long run.
Since Mr. Trump’s push to reorder the trading system kicked off in February, the European Union has been hustling to strike new trade agreements and deepen existing ones.
Canada and the European Union have pulled together. Britain and the European Union have had a rapprochement, five years after Britain officially exited the union. The bloc is working toward closer trading relationships with India and South Africa, and with countries across South America and Asia.
Nor is the European Union the only global power adopting such a strategy. Canada is also drawing closer to Southeast Asia, while Brazil and Mexico are working to deepen their ties.
Officials have even floated the idea of building trading structures that exclude the United States and China, which is widely blamed for supporting its factories to the point that they overproduce and flood global markets with cheap goods.
Ms. von der Leyen recently suggested that Europe could pursue a new collaboration between the bloc and a trading group of 11 countries that includes Japan, Vietnam and Australia, but that notably did not include the United States or China.
One key question, analysts said, is whether America’s allies will go a step further. Instead of simply collaborating more with one another and leaving the United States out, could they actually gang up to counter the United States?
Large economies could consider coordinating their retaliation to Mr. Trump’s latest round of tariffs, said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, an economic policy research organization in Brussels. Banding together could give them more leverage.
“I would start to look for coordination,” he said. “That’s the rational thing.”
Ana Swanson contributed reporting from Washington.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
