Donald Trump is tightening the tariff screw again, calling into question an agreement he himself helped negotiate. Starting next week, cars and trucks from the European Union are to be hit with a twenty five percent tariff. The justification is a claim. The EU is not complying with the agreement. He does not say what violations he means. It remains a series of hints he repeats on Truth Social as well as in front of reporters at the White House. It is the method of a political fog machine. Say enough to build pressure. Not enough to be disproven.
The agreement exists in black and white. In July of last year, Trump and Ursula von der Leyen reached a deal that capped tariffs on most goods at fifteen percent. That ceiling is now in question. Not because it was renegotiated, but because the legal basis has collapsed. This year, the Supreme Court stripped the administration of the authority to justify tariffs on the basis of an economic emergency. That was the basis Trump had previously used. Since then, the White House has been searching for alternative constructions, already imposing ten percent and preparing further steps. When one path is blocked, another is found. The objective remains the same. The method becomes more flexible.
The planned twenty five percent is more than a political pressure tool. Trump says it himself, almost without disguise. Higher tariffs are meant to force European manufacturers to move production to the United States more quickly. This is not about fine adjustments. It is about industrial policy with a sledgehammer. At the same time, the administration risks breaking an agreement whose ink is barely dry. The European Commission has already made it clear that it is meeting its obligations and expects the United States to do the same. Brussels negotiates by the rules. Washington negotiates with a hammer.
The economic situation makes the move even more sensitive. The war against Iran has pushed energy prices upward. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively blocked. Oil and gas have become more expensive. Growth expectations are declining. Inflation is rising again. In the United States, it stood at 3.3 percent in March, higher than at the beginning of Trump’s term. This is the same man who returned to office promising to bring prices down quickly. Instead of delivering on that promise, he is now adding a second layer to inflation. Tariff on tariff, price on price, promise on promise.
What Trump is doing to humanity, to the environment, to the climate, to the economy, and to his own country will take decades to repair. A man with visible health issues and a character that seems signed by Lucifer himself is terrorizing the world while awake. And the next generations will pay the price for a term in which one man destroyed everything others had built before him.
There are men who leave behind a body of work. There are men who leave behind a legacy. And then there is this one man who leaves behind nothing but rubble in almost every area he touched. Climate, which he fought as if it were a personal enemy. Environment, which he treated as an obstacle. An economy in which he plants inflation like others plant roses. Science, which he despises because it contradicts him. Alliances, which he tears down because the very word seems to irritate him. Democracy, which he undermines with every signature, every tweet, every breath.
Decades. That is the honest time frame. Not years. Decades in which children will be born who will never understand why the earth they inherit is so much poorer than the one their grandparents received. And they will ask how it was possible that a single man was allowed to cause so much damage. The answer will not be comfortable. It was not only him. It was everyone who went along, who voted for him, and everyone who watched, and everyone who stayed silent because silence was easier than opposition. Lucifer does not need horns. He only needs consent. And he got it, in a country that once called itself free, and in a world that realized too late what was happening.
Politically, the timing is at least as precarious as it is economically. Ahead of the midterm elections in November, discontent over the economic situation is growing. According to a recent survey by the AP NORC Center, only thirty percent of US adults now support Trump’s economic policy. A number that in any normal White House would set off alarm bells. In this White House, it appears to be the signal to press the accelerator even harder. The same strategy that already fueled inflation is now being intensified, as if repetition could turn a bad idea into a good one.
On the European side, the scale has long been understood. The EU had expected the agreement to save its automakers 500 to 600 million euros per month. In total, trade between the two sides amounts to 1.7 trillion euros a year. Around 4.6 billion per day. Anyone adjusting tariffs here is not touching a marginal area, but one of the largest economic zones in the world. It is like someone working with a wrench inside a clockwork and wondering why time falls out of rhythm.
Maroš Šefčovič, the EU trade commissioner, had recently emphasized that relations had improved. That assessment is now under scrutiny. While Brussels insists on compliance with the agreement, Washington relies on unilateral measures. It is Trump’s familiar logic. Agreements are not binding, they are suggestions. Only what is useful in the moment is binding.
In the end, the situation is simple. A signed agreement applies only as long as it is politically convenient. The legal defeat before the Supreme Court is not used as a reason to correct course, but as a trigger for new paths that pursue the same objective. Higher tariffs, more pressure, more risk for both sides. Anyone who has ever sat in a negotiation knows that trust takes years to build and is lost in a tweet. Trump has long since written that tweet. He writes it again every day.
The effect is predictable. Companies do not respond to uncertainty with investment, but with hesitation. Prices do not rise because markets demand it, but because politics pushes them upward. While the administration claims this shows strength, consumers on both sides of the Atlantic ultimately pay the bill. In Detroit, in Stuttgart, in Bratislava, in Ohio. The man in the White House calls it negotiation. The world calls it a surcharge delivered directly to anyone filling up, shopping, or ordering a car.
Trump is simply exhausting the world. Sometimes that is the only diagnosis left for the madness coming out of Washington.
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