Bessent says Trump tariff threat may light a fire under EU in trade talks

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Friday that President Donald Trump does not believe that the European Union's trade offers to the United States are of sufficient quality and that he hopes that a June 1 50% tariff threat will "light a fire under the EU" in negotiations with Washington.

Bessent told Fox News Channel that many other top U.S. trading partners are negotiating in good faith with the exception of the EU.

Intensifying his trade war, Trump on Friday said he was "recommending" a 50% tariff on EU goods starting on June 1, Trump warned Apple that he may impose a 25% tariff on any iPhones manufactured outside the U.S.

The bombshell announcement comes a day after Bessent wrapped up meetings with G7 finance leaders, including European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis. The G7 ministers meeting in Banff, Alberta, papered over deep divisions on Trump's tariffs to reach agreement on efforts to reduce "excessive imbalances" in the global economy.

"The conversation in Canada was fine. The problem was the lead up to that," Bessent said.

He told Fox News that other countries have been making trade offers in good faith, and that talks were advanced with some of them, including India and some Asian countries that have made some "very interesting proposals."

"And I believe the president believes that the EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we've seen from our other important trading partners," Bessent said.

He said the feedback he's getting from some EU countries is that they are unaware of proposals being put forth by the European Commission from Brussels.

"I'm not going to negotiate on TV, but I would hope that this would light a fire under the EU," Bessent said. "The EU has a collective action problem here. It's 27 countries, but they're being represented by this one group in Brussels."

Regarding Trump's threat to add a 25% tariff to Apple iPhones manufactured outside the United States, Bessent said Trump wanted to bring precision manufacturing back to the United States, including semiconductors.

"I think that one of our greatest vulnerabilities is this external production, especially in semiconductors. And a large part of Apple's components are in semiconductors," Bessent said. "So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure."