President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade deal between the U.S. and European Union on Sunday.
The announcement came moments after the two had addressed the media, agreeing that the likelihood of an agreement was about 50-50. Von der Leyen said the negotiations had taken some ‘heavy lifting,’ but the two leaders agreed they were happy with the result.
‘We are agreeing that the tariff straight across for automobiles and everything else will be a straight-across tariff of 15%,’ Trump said.
‘So we have a tariff of 15%. We have the opening up of all of the European countries, which I think I could say were essentially closed. I mean, you weren’t exactly taking our orders. You weren’t exactly taking our agriculture,’ he added, addressing von der Leyen.
Von der Leyen said Europe will also purchase $150 billion worth of U.S. energy as part of the deal, in addition to making $600 billion in other investments into the U.S.
Trump and von der Leyen had sounded unsure of whether a deal would be reached even as they spoke to the press in Scotland on Sunday.
‘We look forward to talking to see if we can do something,’ Trump had said of the negotiations. ‘We’ve had, a very good relationship over the years, but it’s been a very one-sided transaction, very unfair to the United States.’
Responding to a reporter’s question, von der Leyen agreed with Trump that there must be a ‘rebalancing’ of the bilateral trade, which is worth billions of dollars.
‘It is about rebalancing,’ von der Leyen said as she sat next to Trump. ‘You can call it fairness, you can call it rebalancing. We have a surplus and the United States has a deficit, and we have to rebalance it.’
