President Trump takes questions from reporters in the Oval Office on May 23, 2025. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption
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President Trump on Friday said he had run out of patience with trade negotiators from the European Union and has decided to set the tariff on imports at 50% starting on June 1.
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“I just said, ‘It’s time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game,'” Trump told reporters.
It is the latest whipsaw move in Trump’s chaotic rollout of tariffs. Trump had first announced his decision on social media early Friday morning, a post that set back stock markets and the value of the U.S. dollar.
The president warned in a separate post that he would put a tariff of at least 25% on imported iPhones, and said he had warned Apple CEO Tim Cook to move his manufacturing to the United States. He suggested the tariff could begin at the end of June.
“I had an understanding with him that he wouldn’t be doing this — he said he’s going to India to build plants. I said, ‘That’s okay to go to India, but you’re not going to sell into here without tariffs.’ And that’s the way it is,” Trump said.
Trump — whose own iPhone rang twice during his Oval Office exchange with reporters — also suggested that tariff could apply to smartphones made by Samsung and other manufacturers.
President Trump speaks at an investment forum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on May 16 with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption
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Win McNamee/Getty Images
Trump had eased off on tariff threats since early April, when he announced tariffs on nearly every country, only to pull many of them back a week later for what he described as a 90-day pause after stock markets plunged and economists warned of recession.
The president has long complained about EU trade barriers, VAT taxes, monetary policy and lawsuits against American companies — and says he thinks it is unfair that the EU sells more to the United States than it imports. His initial tariff rate for the EU on April 2 was 20%. The EU threatened countermeasures at the time.
Bessent says he hopes Trump’s comments “light a fire” under the EU
Trump administration officials have launched into talks with a series of countries seeking to negotiate lower rates. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Friday that the countries he has been negotiating with in Asia have presented “interesting proposals” and he expected some deals by the end of the 90-day pause, in July.
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But Bessent expressed frustration with EU leadership and said he hoped Trump’s threat would spur talks. “I would hope that this would light a fire under the EU,” Bessent said.
However, Trump later indicated that he wasn’t interested in reaching a deal with the EU by the June 1 deadline. “I’m not looking for a deal,” Trump said. He did suggest he could be open to exemptions for companies or sectors that needed time to be able to move production to the United States. But when asked if there was anything the EU could do to avoid that 50% tariff, the president said, “I don’t know.”
Trump’s team has so far announced only one preliminary trade agreement — with the United Kingdom. Talks with China resulted in steep tariffs coming down earlier this month, pending more discussions through the summer.
Trump told business leaders at an event last week in the United Arab Emirates that he did not think there would be enough time for Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other officials to reach agreements with all major U.S. trading partners. (Bessent has said the administration is focusing on 18.) Trump said he expected that his team would simply announce new tariff rates.
“So at a certain point over the next two to three weeks, I think Scott and Howard will be sending letters out, essentially telling people … what they’ll be paying to do business in the United States,” Trump said.
