Does Trump’s handshake deal with the EU put America first?

What’s really at stake in these trade deals? That is what we are slowly discovering as Donald Trump’s handshakes with America’s trading partners are turned into specific and detailed agreements. Today we are getting the details of one of the biggest deals struck so far: a trade agreement with the famously protectionist European Union, which agreed in principle to a deal back in July, with the caveat on both the US and EU side that taxes on key sectors were still up for discussion.

Those discussions, it seems, have produced some details. Despite early threats that America would impose tariffs of 250 percent and 100 percent on EU imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors respectively, the headline duties for both have been reduced to 15 percent. Indeed, most goods flowing from the EU’s 27 countries into the US will be subject to a 15 percent tariff. Still, there are some disputes. Trump is keeping the tax on EU-made vehicles at 27.5 percent until the EU drops many of the tariffs it has placed on American goods. Unlike trade deals secured with Indonesia and the Philippines, where both countries slashed their tariffs on US products, the EU has been reluctant to go as far.

While it’s admittedly refreshing to watch the European Union grapple with the harms of protectionism – similarly to what it’s forced other countries to endure in past decades – who is really emerging as the winner? While the huge drop in proposed taxes on pharmaceutical imports is being chalked up as a good deal for the bloc, it’s perhaps better described as a less bad deal for American importers, who will be paying the new and higher taxes on these medicines and materials as they make their way from the EU to the US.

It’s a curious tax hike from President Trump, who has been insisting that drug prices need to come down for American consumers. As my colleague Michael Simmons points out in the UK magazine this week, prices of weight-loss jabs in Britain are starting to soar as drug companies work to rebalance where their profits come from in an attempt to lower prices for these drugs in America (a little, anyway). But if Trump’s goal is to bring down the cost of drugs in the US, slapping higher taxes on imported medicine is an odd move. 

Of course, in Trumpworld, trade-offs don’t exist. There’s no downside, no losing. There’s only “winning.” And you can bet his administration is delighted this week with a New York Times report revealing a mass exodus of registered Democrats from the party. The Democrats are “hemorrhaging” voters, according to the Times, in every one of the 30 states that tracks voters by political party. An estimated 2.1 million people abandoned their “Democrat” registration between 2020 and 2024, while an estimated 2.4 million voters signed up as Republicans.

We didn’t necessarily need hard numbers to confirm that the Democratic party is in the midst of a crisis (the 2024 election result was evidence enough), but these figures from suggest an even bigger problem for the left: one that appears to have been brewing long before Joe Biden was switched out for Kamala Harris. Even when the Democrats were winning elections and mid-terms, they were losing parts of their base, including people who were so on message that they were happy to register their affiliation with the cause.

One wonders if snide remarks about working Americans, or a full-fat socialist agenda, will bring left-leaning voters back home. It seems unlikely.

This article first appeared in Freddy Gray’s Americano newsletter. Subscribe here.