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    Trump’s latest tariffs ‘are real’ unless deals improve, economic adviser says

    Donald Trump has seen some trade deal offers and thinks they need to be better, Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, said on Sunday, adding that the president will proceed with threatened tariffs on Mexico, the European Union and other countries if they don’t improve.“Well, these tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough,” Hassett told ABC’s This Week program. “But you know, conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles.“Hassett told ABC’s This Week program that Trump’s threatened 50% tariff on goods from Brazil reflect Trump’s frustration with the South American country’s actions as well as its trade negotiations with the US.On Thursday, Brazil threatened to retaliate against Trump’s plan with its own 50% tariff on US goods. “If he charges us 50%, we’ll charge him 50%,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, told local news outlet Record, a day after Trump threatened to impose steep duties on Brazilian goods.Hassett’s comments come one day after Trump announced on his Truth Social social media platform that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% tariff rate starting on 1 August, angering European capitals who had thought they had previously reached a deal with Trump. The prior deal would have involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Sunday said he will work intensively with French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to resolve the escalating trade war with the United States.“I discussed this intensively over the weekend with both Macron and Ursula von der Leyen,” Merz told German broadcaster ARD, adding he had also spoken with Trump about the matter.“We want to use this time now, the two and half weeks until August 1 to find a solution. I am really committed to this,” Merz said.Merz said the German economy would be hit hard by the tariffs, and he was doing his best to make sure US tariffs of 30% were not imposed.Unity in Europe and a sensible dialogue with the US president were now needed, Merz said, although countermeasures should not be ruled out. “But not before August 1,” he said.EU trade ministers are scheduled to meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to implement €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which are now paused until 1 August, the same day as Trump’s new deadline.Macron has called on the EU to “defend European interests resolutely” in response to Trump’s threats.French cheese and wine producers have warned of the damaging impact that Trump’s threatened 30% tariffs on imports from the EU would have on the country’s agriculture industry.A 30% duty would be “disastrous” for France’s food industry, said Jean-François Loiseau, the president of food lobby group ANIA, while Francois Xavier Huard, the CEO of dairy association FNIL, said: “It’s a real shock for milk and cheese producers – this is an important market for us.”In the interview with ABC News on Sunday, Hassett also said that Trump has the authority to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for cause if evidence supports that, adding that the Fed “has a lot to answer for” on renovation cost overruns at its Washington headquarters.Any decision by Trump to try to fire Powell over what the Trump administration calls a $700bn cost overrun “is going to depend a lot on the answers that we get to the questions that Russ Vought sent to the Fed”, Hassett said.Vought, the White House budget director, last week slammed Powell over an “ostentatious overhaul” of the Fed’s buildings and answers to a series of questions. Trump has repeatedly said that Powell should resign because he has not lowered interest rates, and the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing anonymous sources, that Hassett is vying to succeed him as the Fed chair. More

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    Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from the EU and Mexico

    Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.The agreement in principle put on Trump’s table last Wednesday involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump acknowledged that the country had been helpful in stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.But, he said, the country had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday she is sure an agreement can be reached before Trump’s threatened tariffs take effect on 1 August.Speaking during an event in the Mexican state of Sonora, the Mexican president added that Mexico’s sovereignty is never negotiable.The higher-than-expected rate has dealt a blow to the EU’s hopes of de-escalation and a trade deal and could risk a trade war with goods of low margins including Belgian chocolate, Irish butter and Italian olive oil.The EU was informed of the tariff hike before Trump’s declaration on social media.In a letter to the EU, Trump warned that the EU would pay a price if they retaliated: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 30% rate would “disrupt transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic”.She said the bloc was one of the more open trading places in the world, and still hoped to persuade Trump to climb down.“We remain ready to continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” she said.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called for “goodwill  … to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the west as a whole. It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.” She added that both sides should avoid “polarisation”.The decision to hike the tariffs will also be another test of Trump’s ability to act in good faith in negotiations.Brussels will view the latest threat as a maneuver by Trump to extract more concessions from the EU, which he once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade.Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, said on Saturday that Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against Trump’s “outrageous” threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Lange.“It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%,” Lange told Reuters.“This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner.”While Trump indicated earlier this week that his new rates, also levelled against big economies including Japan, South Korea and Brazil, will not apply until 1 August, his latest tactic will create much distrust.Europe should make it clear that these “unfair trade practices” were unacceptable, Lange said.“We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately,” he said.“The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly.”Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, downplayed the impact of the threatened 50% tariff. Trump and Lula have indicated a willingness to negotiate, though Lula also said: “Trump could’ve called, but instead posted the tariff news on his website – a complete lack of respect which is typical of his behavior towards everyone.”Even if Trump had agreed to the proposal put on his table on Wednesday, further negotiations would have been needed in any case to create a legal text that can be formally registered by the US government, a process that is itself laden with risk.The UK took seven weeks to get its agreement registered with a promise included to reduce tariffs on car exports from 27.5% to 10%, but the agreed zero tariff for the British steel industry was omitted.Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former congressional budget office director and president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the letters were evidence that serious trade talks had not been taking place over the past three months. He stressed that nations were instead talking among themselves about how to minimize their own exposure to the US economy and Trump.“They’re spending time talking to each other about what the future is going to look like, and we’re left out,” Holtz-Eakin said.He added that Trump was using the letters to demand attention, but, “in the end, these are letters to other countries about taxes he’s going to levy on his citizens”.The new tariff ends a turbulent week for the EU with Trump announcing an extension for talks until 1 August on Monday, then on Tuesday announcing the EU would “probably” receive a letter setting its new US tariff rate within 48 hours, claiming the bloc had shifted from being “very tough” to “very nice”.But diplomats viewed it as a mixed message as Trump stressed that he was still talking to negotiators from the bloc, but that he was displeased with European policies toward US tech firms. More

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    Von der Leyen Faces No-Confidence Vote in Far-Right Challenge

    Ahead of the vote on Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the commission, appeared before the European Parliament to defend herself against complaints about transparency.Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, is expected to face a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament this week. While the measure is likely to fail, it will be a symbolic challenge to the European Union’s top official at a time of high tension.Ms. von der Leyen appeared before Parliament on Monday for a debate to address the complaints against her ahead of the vote, which is scheduled for Thursday.The challenge originated from Europe’s far right: Gheorghe Piperea, a parliamentary newcomer from Romania who belongs to a political group that is often critical of the European Union, accused Ms. von der Leyen’s commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, of “failures to ensure transparency.”The complaint referred to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times over the commission’s denial of a request for records of text messages between Ms. von der Leyen and Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, when she was trying to procure coronavirus vaccines.The General Court in Luxembourg sided with The Times, ruling in May that Ms. von der Leyen’s commission did not provide enough of an explanation in refusing the request for her text messages with the Pfizer executive.Mr. Piperea’s complaint also referred to the commission’s push to ramp up joint defense procurement and to carry out digital laws. He asserted in a filing that the commission’s behavior had been repeatedly opaque and “undermines trust.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Canada and EU sign defense pact amid strained US relations and global instability

    Canada has signed a wide-ranging defence pact with the EU, as Donald Trump and global instability prompt traditional US allies to deepen their alliances.Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, on Monday joined European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and head of the European Council, António Costa, in Brussels, where they signed a security and defence partnership, pledged more support for Ukraine, as well as joint work on issues from the climate crisis to artificial intelligence.At a cordial press conference, Carney described Canada as “the most European of the non-European countries” that “looks first to the European Union to build a better world”.Costa spoke in kind: “The European Union and Canada are among the closest allies in the transatlantic space. We see the world through the same lens. We stand for the same values.”Not mentioned was another leader in the transatlantic space: Donald Trump, whose disrespect for old allies appears to have galvanised what was an already healthy EU-Canada relationship.The US president is expected at the two-day Nato summit in the Hague starting on Tuesday, when members of the transatlantic alliance are called to pledge to spend 5% of GDP on defence.Carney, a veteran central banker turned politician, won a stunning victory in April pledging that Canada would not become the 51st US state, a proposal often floated by Trump.He said he had a mandate “to diversify and strengthen our international partnerships” and find new means of co-operation and co-ordination. The summit took place, Carney told reporters, “we might say in a hinge moment of history, a world that is more dangerous and divided, a time where the rules-based international global order is under threat”.The EU-Canada security and defence partnership opens the door to increased Canadian participation in the EU’s fledgling €150bn defence fund, known as Safe. Von der Leyen said the defence partnership meant working on joint capabilities, interoperability and joint procurement, referencing air defence. “The access of Canada to our joint procurement in the European Union, the door is open,” she said.The security pact is a Canadian version of the agreement the EU signed with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, last month. The bloc already had similar arrangements with six other countries including Norway and Japan, but this is the first with any country in the Americas. The defence pact includes joint work on cyber, maritime and space security, arms control and support for Ukraine.Countries that have a defence and security pact with the EU can take part in joint procurement of weapons funded by the €150bn (£128bn, $173bn) Safe programme, although must negotiate a further technical agreement. Von der Leyen pledged both sides would “swiftly launch talks” on Canadian access to the joint procurement scheme.Carney said the agreement with the EU would help Canada “deliver on our new capabilities more rapidly and more effectively”. Canada has been one of the laggards of the Nato alliance: in 2024 it spent just 1.37% of GDP on defence, well below the 2% set in 2014.The two sides have a €125bn trading relationship, underpinned by the Ceta pact signed in 2016 that abolished 98% of tariffs. The agreement, however, has yet to be ratified by national parliaments in 10 EU member states, including Belgium, France, Italy and Poland, meaning elements of the deal have yet to enter into force.In advance of the meeting Carney and his wife, Diana Fox, Carney visited Schoonselhof military cemetery in Antwerp, where 348 Canadians are buried, “brave young soldiers who ventured across the Atlantic to defend the freedom of Europe”, Carney wrote on social media.The Carneys were accompanied by Belgium’s prime minister, formerly a long-serving Antwerp mayor, Bart De Wever, where they were given a tour of the ceremony and laid wreaths on behalf of Belgium and Canada. The last post was played by one of De Wever’s sons, according to local paper Het Nieuwsblad. More

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    Western leaders call for diplomacy, but they won’t stop this war – they refuse to even name its cause | Nesrine Malik

    Since the war on Gaza started, the defining dynamic has been of unprecedented anger, panic and alarm from the public, swirling around an eerily placid political centre. The feeble response from mainstream liberal parties is entirely dissonant with the gravity of the moment. As the US joins Israel in attacking Iran, and the Middle East heads toward a calamitous unravelling, their inertness is more disorienting than ever. They are passengers in Israel’s war, either resigned to the consequences or fundamentally unwilling to even question its wisdom. As reality screams at politicians across the west, they shuffle papers and reheat old rhetoric, all while deferring to an Israel and a White House that have long taken leave of their senses.At a time of extreme geopolitical risk the centre presents itself as the wise party in the fracas, making appeals for cool heads and diplomacy, but is entirely incapable of addressing or challenging the root cause. Some are afraid to even name it. Israel has disappeared from the account, leaving only a regrettable crisis and a menacing Iran. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has called for de-escalation. But he referred to the very escalation he wishes to avoid – the US’s involvement – as an alleviation of the “grave threat” posed by Iran, all the while building up UK forces in the Middle East.The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, underlines the importance of diplomacy while making sure to assert that Iran is the “principal source” of instability in the region. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, had seemed to be inhabiting the real world, warning against the inevitable chaos that would be triggered by regime change in Iran and in repeating the mistakes of the past. But by Sunday France had fallen into line, joining the chorus calling for de-escalation and restraint in vague general terms, and reiterating “firm opposition” to Iran’s nuclear programme.If this seems maddeningly complacent to you, let me reassure you that you are not, in fact, missing something. The war with Iran is very bad news, and introduces a number of profoundly destabilising scenarios: regime change with no day-after plan, leaving a large cadre of armed military and security forces in play; the amassing in the region of western military forces that could become targets and flashpoints; or simply a prolonged war of attrition that would seize up the region and open a large festering wound of anger and militarisation. It’s also – and this is something Israel’s assaults have inured us to – killing hundreds of innocent people. To say nothing of the fact that it is, above all the extant risks, illegal.But most western leaders continue to treat it as just another chapter of unfortunate but ultimately fixed realities of the world to manage. And here is the sinkhole at the heart of the entire response to Israel over the past year and a half – a vacant centre. Trump is Trump. No one is expecting him to have a coherent, brave and stabilising response to Israel. But the problem predates him: a political establishment of ostensibly liberal, reliable custodians of stability that has no moral compass, and no care for the norms it constantly claims to uphold. Under its watch, international and human rights law has been violated again and again in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and now Iran. Its answer has been to get out of Israel’s way at best, and arm it and provide it with diplomatic cover at worst. Joe Biden’s administration set the tone, and European governments followed. Collectively, they have clung on to a status quo of unconditional support for Israel and, in doing so, shattered the legal and moral conventions that imbued them with any measure of integrity or authority.And yet they still carry on amid the wreckage. Their pronouncements about the importance of diplomacy sound like echoes from an era that has long passed – one before a livestreamed genocide demolished any semblance of a coherent system of international law. What the current moment has revealed is a cohort of regimes fundamentally unsuited to crisis, fit only for management; a crop of politicians whose very role is not to rethink or challenge the way things are, but simply to shepherd geopolitical traffic. Their mandate is indeed to stabilise, but only in the sense of locking in a world order of failing assumptions and hierarchies. It is not to make the world a better place, but to cast a veneer of credibility over why it is necessary that we live in this worse one.This is not to be confused with “pragmatism”. Pragmatism implies a lack of position or vested interest. What is obscured by the language of reluctant engagement is that it is underpinned by beliefs that are defined not by values, but by tribal supremacy. Iran is a country which, in the eyes of a liberal establishment, is never fully sovereign because it has diverged from western interests. It has no right of response when attacked (and in fact, must show restraint when it is). Its people have no right to expect a careful consideration of their future, or indeed the entire region’s. Israel, on the other hand, is a super sovereign, and never culpable.This default position is so naked in its hypocrisy, so ignorant and parochial in its worldview, so clear in its disregard for human life, that it represents a colossal erosion of sophistication in political discourse, and a new low in contempt for the public. Support for Israel can only be defended by facile, logic-defying references to its right to defend itself even when it is the aggressor, and Iran’s “threat to the free world”. Forgive me, but is that the same free world that backed unilateral attacks on four Middle East territories by Israel, a country whose leader is wanted by the international criminal court? At this point, the biggest threat to the free world is itself, which will sacrifice everything to ensure that not a single challenge to its power is allowed to pass.The end result is that such leaders are not only irresponsible, they are unrepresentative, unable and unwilling even to manufacture consent any more. An accelerating nihilism has taken hold. Mandates fray as centrist governments and political parties stray further and further from the public, which in Europe declares a historically low level of support for Israel. In the US (including Trump supporters), a majority opposes involvement in war with Iran. And so the gap between a detached politics and bloody reality widens even further. The managers of western hegemony hurtle into the void, taking all of us with them.

    Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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    Iran says diplomacy with US only possible if Israeli aggression stops

    Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said that his country is ready for more diplomacy with the US only if Israel’s war on his country is brought to an end “and the aggressor is held accountable for the crimes he committed”.After several hours of talks with European foreign ministers in Geneva on Friday, there was no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough – or a resumption of negotiations with the US.Araghchi said: “Iran is ready to consider diplomacy once again and once the aggression is stopped and the aggressor is held accountable for the crimes committed. We support the continuation of discussion with [Britain, France, Germany and the EU] and express our readiness to meet again in the near future.”Late on Friday, Donald Trump said he was unlikely to press Israel to scale back its campaign to allow negotiations to continue.“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.Araghchi said he was willing to continue talks with his European counterparts since they have not supported Israel’s attacks directly. But he said Iran was “seriously concerned over the failure of the three countries to condemn Israel’s act of aggression” and would continue to exercise its right to “legitimate defence”.He also said Iran’s capabilities, including its missile capabilities, are non-negotiable, and could not form part of the talks, a rebuff to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who in an earlier statement said they should be included in the talks.With Israeli diplomats and military commanders warning of a “prolonged war”, the route to direct talks between the US and Iran remains blocked, leaving the European countries as intermediaries.After Friday’s talks between Araghchi and his British, French and German counterparts, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “This is a perilous moment, and it is hugely important that we don’t see regional escalation of this conflict.”The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said there “can be no definitive solution through military means to the Iran nuclear problem. Military operations can delay it but they cannot eliminate it.”The talks are being held against the backdrop of Trump’s threat that the US could launch its own military assault on Iran within a fortnight – a step that would probably turn the already bloody war into a full-scale regional conflagration.European diplomats said they came to talks to deliver a tough message from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and special envoy, Steve Witkoff: that the threat of US military action is real but that a “diplomatic pathway remains open”.But without direct talks between the US and Iran it is hard to see how an agreement can be reached to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme in a way that satisfies the US headline demand that Iran must never have a nuclear bomb.Trump suggested that European efforts would not be enough to bring any resolution. He said: “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”The European ministers said they had expressed their longstanding concerns about Iran’s expansion of its nuclear programme, “which has no credible civilian purpose and is in violation of almost all provisions in the nuclear deal agreed in 2015”.The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said: “Today the regional escalation benefits no one. We must keep the discussions open.”Earlier on Friday, Macron said the European offer to end Israel’s war would include an Iranian move to zero uranium enrichment, restrictions on its ballistic missile programme and an end to Tehran’s funding of terrorist groups.The proposals were surprisingly broad, spanning a range of complex issues beyond Iran’s disputed nuclear programme, and appeared likely to complicate any solution unless an interim agreement can be agreed.One proposal recently aired is for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment for the duration of Donald Trump’s presidency. The concept of uranium enrichment being overseen by a consortium of Middle East countries – including Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – remains on the table.Macron, already accused by Trump of publicity seeking this week, set out a daunting agenda. “It’s absolutely essential to prioritise a return to substantial negotiations, including nuclear negotiations to move towards zero [uranium] enrichment, ballistic negotiations to limit Iran’s activities and capabilities, and the financing of all terrorist groups and destabilisation of the region that Iran has been carrying out for several years,” he said.In the previous five rounds of talks, the US insisted that Iran end its entire domestic uranium enrichment programme, but said it would allow Iran to retain a civil nuclear programme, including by importing enriched uranium from a multinational consortium.Iran claims that as a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, it has an absolute legal right to enrich uranium, a position neither the European nor American powers have endorsed. In the past, European negotiators have proved more adept than their US partners in finding compromises, including the temporary suspension of domestic enrichment, a principle Tehran reluctantly endorsed between 2003 and 2004. More

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    I grew up on American food. Trust me, it’s the last thing Europe needs | Alexander Hurst

    All over European media, the take seems to be similar – that the EU is “under pressure” to conclude some sort of deal with the US in order to avoid Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline for the unilateral imposition of broad tariffs. What might be on the table in the attempt to secure that? In early May, the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was already suggesting that a deal to increase purchases from the US could include agricultural products – a possibility that seems to remain even though Šefčovič later clarified that the EU was not contemplating changing its health or safety standards.Since I have failed to Abba (“Always be boldly acronyming”) and don’t have anything as good as Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) – coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong – at the ready, I’ll simply reach for the easy line: opening the door even slightly to more US food imports into the EU would leave a bad taste in all our mouths. Trump’s hostage-taking approach to trade should not be rewarded, certainly not with something that hits as close to home as food does.“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” declared the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in April. Laughter aside, every time I go back to the US I become a vegetarian for the duration of my trip – even though US grocery store vegetables are themselves generally big, blemish-free and bland. Why? Call me paranoid, but I simply don’t want to ingest the same growth hormones that Lutnick’s “beautiful” meat probably contains traces of and that are banned in the EU.Growing up in Ohio, I experienced the full force of US food culture. It was the 90s, which meant that margarine was most definitely in and butter was out; an example that highlights how processed everything took root, including – in my vegetarian family – highly processed meat alternatives. The people around me meant well, but how do you fight a system that, from top to bottom, was designed to push high fructose corn syrup into practically everything (and most worryingly into school lunches)?To be fair, all of this has since generated a domestic backlash, but there’s an intense amount of momentum behind it still: almost without fail, I find that the standard sugar level in the US soars far beyond what I now find appealing. Even in places I wouldn’t expect to find added sugar at all, like pizza.And why would the Trump administration’s full-scale savaging of the US government’s administrative and regulatory capacity, including the Food and Drug Administration, increase anyone’s trust that what US regulation does exist is actually being followed?Some of you are perhaps rolling your eyes, thinking: Alexander Hurst, a naturalised French citizen, has gone full “chauvin”; converts are the worst. Except it’s not just me. There is an entire internet subgenre of content extolling the virtues of French butter, or involving Americans who come to France and realise that this is what peaches, or strawberries, really taste like.Beyond the question of whether or not Europeans want to eat US agricultural output, a hypothetical trade deal would involve hugely negative climate impacts. The distance that food travels already accounts for 20% of global agriculture-related emissions pollution, and Europe’s share in imported agriculture emissions is already high. We need to be reducing it, not adding to it through foodstuffs carted unnecessarily across the Atlantic.How can we ask European farmers to accelerate their transition to regenerative agriculture (which offers the potential to drastically reduce agriculture emissions) if, at the same time, they are being undercut by US producers who face far lower regulatory standards?“Europe already produces and grows everything it could possibly need. The last thing we want to see circulating is hormone-pumped beef or chlorinated poultry,” says Lindsey Tramuta, the author of The Eater Guide to Paris. “Even beyond the goods themselves, there’s the issue of distance: why bring food over from the US if Europeans can get their needs met from much closer to home?”Yannick Huang, who manages the Vietnamese restaurant Loan in Paris’s Belleville neighbourhood, agrees. “At a time when we’re trying to do organic, local, it’s pointless to want to import anything from the US,” he told me. Huang, who is obsessive about ingredient quality, only serves French beef. To him, US agriculture comes tainted with the connotation of “GMOs and other problems”.Hold on, you might say. Isn’t it inconsistent to oppose Trump’s tariffs while also promoting food protectionism? Fair point: it’s hard to find a “one size fits all” approach to globalisation. It has harmed some workers in wealthy economies while also reducing the gap between low-income nations and high-income ones. No country on Earth has a fully self-contained advanced semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and in sectors where globalisation has become excessive, it might be even more economically harmful to roll back. None of that, though, means that things that have resisted becoming fully global should all of a sudden be opened up – food most of all.Ramzi Saadé is a Lebanese-Canadian chef whose Paris restaurant, Atica, is dedicated to a fiercely regional approach to haute cuisine. But taking his diners on a voyage of discovery doesn’t mean his food has to go on one too; despite focusing on first Basque, and now Corsican cuisine, he sources almost all of his ingredients from the area surrounding Paris. For a lamb dish involving 13 different elements, only the nepeta, a Corsican herb, had travelled, he said. “Is my role today to bring you Japanese culture via wasabi flown to Paris?” Saadé asked. “No, my role is to explain to you that it’s grated this way and put on fish for this reason, and I can do that with wasabi from France.”I couldn’t help but think that it’s actually far more interesting to do it his way – to interpret a cuisine rather than attempt to transpose it.We are what we eat. A cuisine is a medium of communication; it is, indelibly, tied up with the stories we tell about who we are. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see food held hostage, or weaponised, in the pursuit of economic or geostrategic goals.Europe’s intense and varied regionality is an enormous part of how it eats and therefore what it is. Opening the market to mass penetration by US agriculture would, little by little, nibble away at that richness. It’s the kind of proposition that, if it ever makes it out of the kitchen, should be sent back straight away.

    Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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    I grew up on American food. Trust me, it’s the last thing Europe needs | Alexander Hurst

    All over European media, the take seems to be similar – that the EU is “under pressure” to conclude some sort of deal with the US in order to avoid Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline for the unilateral imposition of broad tariffs. What might be on the table in the attempt to secure that? In early May, the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was already suggesting that a deal to increase purchases from the US could include agricultural products – a possibility that seems to remain even though Šefčovič later clarified that the EU was not contemplating changing its health or safety standards.Since I have failed to Abba (“Always be boldly acronyming”) and don’t have anything as good as Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) – coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong – at the ready, I’ll simply reach for the easy line: opening the door even slightly to more US food imports into the EU would leave a bad taste in all our mouths. Trump’s hostage-taking approach to trade should not be rewarded, certainly not with something that hits as close to home as food does.“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” declared the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in April. Laughter aside, every time I go back to the US I become a vegetarian for the duration of my trip – even though US grocery store vegetables are themselves generally big, blemish-free and bland. Why? Call me paranoid, but I simply don’t want to ingest the same growth hormones that Lutnick’s “beautiful” meat probably contains traces of and that are banned in the EU.Growing up in Ohio, I experienced the full force of US food culture. It was the 90s, which meant that margarine was most definitely in and butter was out; an example that highlights how processed everything took root, including – in my vegetarian family – highly processed meat alternatives. The people around me meant well, but how do you fight a system that, from top to bottom, was designed to push high fructose corn syrup into practically everything (and most worryingly into school lunches)?To be fair, all of this has since generated a domestic backlash, but there’s an intense amount of momentum behind it still: almost without fail, I find that the standard sugar level in the US soars far beyond what I now find appealing. Even in places I wouldn’t expect to find added sugar at all, like pizza.And why would the Trump administration’s full-scale savaging of the US government’s administrative and regulatory capacity, including the Food and Drug Administration, increase anyone’s trust that what US regulation does exist is actually being followed?Some of you are perhaps rolling your eyes, thinking: Alexander Hurst, a naturalised French citizen, has gone full “chauvin”; converts are the worst. Except it’s not just me. There is an entire internet subgenre of content extolling the virtues of French butter, or involving Americans who come to France and realise that this is what peaches, or strawberries, really taste like.Beyond the question of whether or not Europeans want to eat US agricultural output, a hypothetical trade deal would involve hugely negative climate impacts. The distance that food travels already accounts for 20% of global agriculture-related emissions pollution, and Europe’s share in imported agriculture emissions is already high. We need to be reducing it, not adding to it through foodstuffs carted unnecessarily across the Atlantic.How can we ask European farmers to accelerate their transition to regenerative agriculture (which offers the potential to drastically reduce agriculture emissions) if, at the same time, they are being undercut by US producers who face far lower regulatory standards?“Europe already produces and grows everything it could possibly need. The last thing we want to see circulating is hormone-pumped beef or chlorinated poultry,” says Lindsey Tramuta, the author of The Eater Guide to Paris. “Even beyond the goods themselves, there’s the issue of distance: why bring food over from the US if Europeans can get their needs met from much closer to home?”Yannick Huang, who manages the Vietnamese restaurant Loan in Paris’s Belleville neighbourhood, agrees. “At a time when we’re trying to do organic, local, it’s pointless to want to import anything from the US,” he told me. Huang, who is obsessive about ingredient quality, only serves French beef. To him, US agriculture comes tainted with the connotation of “GMOs and other problems”.Hold on, you might say. Isn’t it inconsistent to oppose Trump’s tariffs while also promoting food protectionism? Fair point: it’s hard to find a “one size fits all” approach to globalisation. It has harmed some workers in wealthy economies while also reducing the gap between low-income nations and high-income ones. No country on Earth has a fully self-contained advanced semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and in sectors where globalisation has become excessive, it might be even more economically harmful to roll back. None of that, though, means that things that have resisted becoming fully global should all of a sudden be opened up – food most of all.Ramzi Saadé is a Lebanese-Canadian chef whose Paris restaurant, Atica, is dedicated to a fiercely regional approach to haute cuisine. But taking his diners on a voyage of discovery doesn’t mean his food has to go on one too; despite focusing on first Basque, and now Corsican cuisine, he sources almost all of his ingredients from the area surrounding Paris. For a lamb dish involving 13 different elements, only the nepeta, a Corsican herb, had travelled, he said. “Is my role today to bring you Japanese culture via wasabi flown to Paris?” Saadé asked. “No, my role is to explain to you that it’s grated this way and put on fish for this reason, and I can do that with wasabi from France.”I couldn’t help but think that it’s actually far more interesting to do it his way – to interpret a cuisine rather than attempt to transpose it.We are what we eat. A cuisine is a medium of communication; it is, indelibly, tied up with the stories we tell about who we are. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see food held hostage, or weaponised, in the pursuit of economic or geostrategic goals.Europe’s intense and varied regionality is an enormous part of how it eats and therefore what it is. Opening the market to mass penetration by US agriculture would, little by little, nibble away at that richness. It’s the kind of proposition that, if it ever makes it out of the kitchen, should be sent back straight away.

    Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More