Trump presses the EU and Mexico with 30% tariffs and the threat of its entry into force on August 1 | International

The European Union and Mexico finally met their verdict this Saturday: a 30% tariff to its exports to the United States. President Donald Trump communicated the figure to Brussels and Mexico City, as he has been doing since Monday, through a letter addressed to the leaders of the countries with whom Washington aspires to review their assets exchange agreements. The imposition of correspondence taxes is only the last chapter of the commercial war unleashed by Trump since his return to power.

The new tax at the EU must be put in the perspective initially announced by Trump: 20% to imports from the United States. That is, 10 more points than announced in the falsely called reciprocal tariffs. But it is still more if you take the general 10% that is in force since in April both parties were given three months to negotiate.

The president of the United States, as usual in this last phase of his aggressive and volatile commercial policy, published the letter addressed to Brussels in his social network, Truth. In it he warns that these 30 points will not be the final ones if the EU decides to answer: “If for any reason he decides (he tells the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen) to increase his tariffs and respond, then, any number he chooses to increase them will be added to 30% that we apply,” says Trump, who closes the letter saying that if the EU “opens its“ open ” “Non -commercial tariffs and barriers” could reconsider what is announced in the letter.

The announcement reached a few minutes after knowing the letter Trump had sent to the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum with the communication of the same tariff: 30%. The Mexican negotiators were on Friday in Washimgton trying to overcome a threat that materialized first thing the next day, when nobody expected it already.

The letter sent to Brussels arrives after the acceleration in the intense negotiations of the last weeks, in which Brussels and Washington have focused on sectoral aspects such as the treatment of cars, a very sensitive matter for Germany and that is consuming a lot of negotiation hours, as it begins to transcend in Brussels. The aeronautical sector is also the protagonist. This Wednesday, Reuters assumed that he would have some kind of exception on general rates.

The content of the text sent by Trump will be debated at the meeting that the Ministers of Commerce will keep Monday in Brussels.

At the moment, 24 countries had received their respective communications during this week. In the group there is everything: from prominent partners such as South Korea and Japan, to others more insignificant, such as Brunéi, Iraq or Moldavia. The percentages are essentially identical (except in cases such as those of Sri Lanka or Cambodia) to those advanced by Trump in April, before granting a 90 -day postponement at their entry into force, and range from 20% to 40%, except in one case: Brazil.

The two neighbors, and partners of the TMEC Free Trade Agreement, received two 35% blows that will be applied, to meet the threats, to the products that are not protected by that pact, and who were now subject to 25%. To both countries Trump contributed the justification, a pretext, rather, that they do not do enough to stop the traffic of fentanyl, a powerful guilty opioid of tens of thousands of deaths due to overdose in the United States in recent years.

The Ibero -American country received full -fledged punishment, a 50%tariff, five times higher than the United States had imposed in April. The reason? Trump considers, and he let it know in his letter addressed to President Lula da Silva, who are unfairly treating the ultra -rightist Jair Bolsonaro, to which the Republican considers a victim of “a witch hunt” by the trial to which he is being submitted for his alleged involvement in the failed coup d’etat of January 2023. Bolsonaro faces a maximum penalty of 43 years in prison From Brazil, the sentence is announced, scheduled, in principle, for the month of September.

The punishment of Brazil is purely ideological, and does not obey commercial reasons: it is one of the few countries that can boast of having a surplus on the US side.

It is not the case of the European Union. Washington and Brussels is the most intense commercial relationship in the world. Every day, with data from 2024, they cross the Atlantic in one direction or in another products worth 2.4 billion euros. In total, 870,000 million euros last year, with a deficit from the American side close to 200,000 million.

The attempts to save the good progress of that relationship have intensified in recent weeks, as it was approaching on July 9, the date on which the truce established unilaterally by Trump in its commercial warfare expired. The president of the United States first imposed tariffs on dozens of its commercial partners on April 2. A week later, he raised them and gave the countries 90 days to reach individual trade agreements with Washington’s negotiators.

Those 90 days arrived on Wednesday. Or, rather, they did not arrive: Trump decided to delay the entry of the tariffs until August 1. You cannot rule out new idea changes before that date. Last Friday he announced his intention to use correspondence to press with views of those pacts. They are “200 countries,” excused himself, impossible to negotiate with all of them face to face. The proof of that impossibility is that within that period the United States has only reached two principles of commercial agreements, with the United Kingdom and with Vietnam, and a temporary truce with China.

Negotiations with European Union are at this point among the most advanced. The contacts were more intense in recent weeks, but not enough, according to sources in Brussels. Above the table were the 17% tariffs that the United States proposes for agricultural products that EU imports.

That figure would be independent of the others imposed since Trump opened hostilities with the rest of the world: 25% for cars and their components, 50% for steel and aluminum, and 10% general to a large number of products, except for some exceptions, from which the aeronautical sector and spirits benefit. This Wednesday night (Washington time), a new tariff entered the scene: 50% to copper. It also flies over the threat that 200% taxes could be about to fall to pharmaceutical products, another obsession of US President.

After the rain of new letters, the clock continues its march: there are 22 days until August 1. A short space of time to prevent the relationship with the EU finally defined as “asymmetric”, euphemism that begins to be heard in Brussels to overcome another adjective, “unbalanced”, more humiliating for Europe.