It’s a bittersweet birthday for the EU-US trade deal. One year after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump struck the landmark agreement in Turnberry, Scotland, transatlantic trade relations are being jeopardised by fresh threats from the US.
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Last week’s €890 million fine imposed by the Commission on US tech giant Google sent the Trump administration into a fury. Posting on Truth Social, the president said the US will launch investigations into unfair trade practices, signalling that his administration is prepared to retaliatewhenthe EU enforces its digital rules against US firms.
However, Trump may have to anticipate consequences himself. After months of negotiations to implement the Turnberry agreement – which imposes 15 percent US tariffs on EU goods and removes EU duties on US industrial products – the Europeans introduced safeguards allowing them to reimpose tariffs on US goods under specific circumstances.
Euronews takes a closer look at how serious the US threat is and what the chances are of the deal being suspended.
What happened after the EU fined Google?
Once the EU announced it was fining Google because of its dominance in the EU’s digital markets, Washington fired two warning shots.
On Thursday night, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the EU’s fine created “uncertainty” for the Turnberry deal, jeopardising the EU-US dialogue on the EU’s digital rules.
The following day, the US threat became more serious with Trump’s post on Truth Social, in which he wrote: “The United States of America is not a ‘PIGGYBANK’ for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!”
He added that his administration would launch a Section 301 investigation under the US Trade Act of 1974, which allows the federal government to counter unfair trade practices by foreign countries.
“The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about,” he said. “Stay tuned!”
How serious are Trump’s threats?
Since the Turnberry agreement was struck, Europeans have grown used to receiving threats from Trump on social media. More often than not, they no longer react.
In December 2025, Washington threatened a list of EU tech companies, including Accenture, Siemens and Spotify, with restrictions or fees if the EU continued regulating US Big Tech through its digital rules.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) – two landmark pieces of EU digital legislation – have been repeatedly criticised by the Trump administration since its return to power as non-tariff barriers targeting mainly US firms.
“Let’s see what time will bring,” German Socialist MEP Bernd Lange, the European Parliament’s trade chief, told Euronews. He added that discussions with the US about EU digital regulations are underway, but said he could not know for sure whether it would lead to “concrete” results.
Nonetheless, Lange believes that if Trump’s threats turn out to be serious, the US could impose restrictions on EU digital services.
What can the EU do if Trump follows through?
On 19 May, after hours of negotiations, the EU’s member states and the European Parliament struck a deal to remove EU tariffs on US goods as of 1 July.
However, in an effort to ensure stability for EU businesses, lawmakers pushed to include safeguards to shield the agreement from future threats.
The Commission can now suspend the deal if the US does not respect the 15 percent ceiling or if it “undermines access of Union economic operators to the United States’ market, discriminates against or targets Union economic operators aiming to operate, or already operating, in the United States”.
The regulation removing EU duties adds that it can also be suspended if the US “disrupts the trade and investment relationship between the Union and the United States.”
Croatian conservative MEP Željana Zovko told Euronews that the “responsibility” for suspending the deal “has rightly been entrusted to the Commission.”
“I am confident it will act at the right time and on the basis of facts,” she added.
Who in the EU would want to suspend the deal?
Over recent weeks, the Commission has appeared to take the view that regardless of whether the US imposes new tariffs, it was prepared to accept them as long as they respected the 15 percent ceiling.
That is what happened on Friday, when a new US tariff regime replaced the one imposed after a February ruling by the US Supreme Court. The EU executive was satisfied to see the new US tariffs set at 10 percent, even though they were imposed over alleged failures to ban imports made with forced labour – an accusation the EU rejects, saying it has strict rules in place to keep such products out of its market.
But what might happen if EU services were targeted?
Lange said there was an agreement with the Commission that if it had to suspend the deal, it would take Parliament’s views into account.
“So if we are pushing for the suspension, then I guess they will do it as well,” he said, adding that there would be sufficient political will in Parliament for such a move.
“We have much more self-confidence than a year ago.”
