EU-US Trade Deal Been Thrown Into Doubt After Trump Tariffs

Quick Answer: The European Parliament’s trade committee convenes an emergency meeting today (Monday 24 February) to decide whether to freeze ratification of the EU-US Turnberry Agreement. The deal — 15% on EU goods, zero on US industrial goods — was negotiated under IEEPA authority the Supreme Court has now struck down. France’s trade minister called for a “united approach.” The UK’s separately negotiated 10% rate has been erased by a flat 15% global tariff that treats all partners the same.

The Turnberry Agreement was supposed to be ratified this week. Instead, the European Parliament’s trade committee will spend Monday morning deciding whether it is even worth saving.

Committee chairman Bernd Lange announced on Sunday that he would propose suspending all legislative work on the deal until the EU receives what he called a “comprehensive legal assessment and clear commitments from the US.” He described the current state of US trade policy as “pure customs chaos,” adding that nobody can make sense of what Washington’s tariff regime actually looks like from one day to the next.

The trigger was Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, which struck down President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs. The IEEPA was the legal authority underpinning the Turnberry Agreement, reached last July when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Trump’s Scottish golf resort. The deal capped US tariffs on most EU exports at 15% — among the lowest rates offered to any trading partner — while the EU agreed to eliminate tariffs on all US industrial goods and open quotas for American agricultural products.

Within hours of the Supreme Court decision, Trump signed an executive order imposing a replacement 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. By Saturday morning, he had raised it to 15% — the statutory maximum — via a Truth Social post. The headline rate happens to match what the EU negotiated. But the legal architecture is entirely different, and the implications for Europe are severe.

The Uniformity Problem

Section 122 requires tariffs to be applied on a non-discriminatory basis. Every country faces the same rate. That means the carefully negotiated concessions in the Turnberry Agreement — the specific product exemptions, the agricultural quotas, the pharmaceutical carve-outs — have no legal mechanism under the new authority. The EU is paying 15% on most goods, but so is everyone else. The preferential treatment that justified the political cost of accepting a lopsided deal has evaporated.

The European Commission initially pushed back against any suggestion the deal was dead. In a statement on Sunday, it insisted that it expects the US to honour the terms of the joint statement. EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič spoke with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over the weekend, seeking what the Commission called “full clarity” on what the new tariff regime means for existing commitments.

France struck a sharper tone. Trade minister Nicolas Forissier told the Financial Times that Europe has the tools to respond, citing the Anti-Coercion Instrument — the EU’s trade “bazooka” — which could target US technology companies through export controls, procurement bans, and tariffs on services. Forissier called for a united approach rather than bilateral deals, a pointed message at a moment when some member states might be tempted to cut side deals with Washington.

The UK’s Vanishing Advantage

Britain is in an even more awkward position. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government had secured a 10% tariff rate — the lowest of any major trading partner — along with specific carve-outs for the UK’s steel, automotive, and pharmaceutical sectors. Officials spent months framing this as evidence that a conciliatory approach to Washington could deliver tangible results.

The move to a uniform 15% rate under Section 122 obliterated that advantage overnight. One Capital Economics analyst described the increase as an effective rebuke to nations that had accepted deals at lower rates. The UK government said on Friday that it expects its “privileged trading position” to continue, but acknowledged it is ultimately a matter for the US to determine whether past agreements still stand.

What Happens Next

The Turnberry Agreement’s ratification had already been frozen once, in January, after Trump threatened tariffs linked to his ambitions for Greenland. The Parliament unfroze the process in early February, with a vote originally scheduled for Tuesday 24 February. That vote is now almost certainly postponed.

Even if the committee decides not to kill the deal outright, the 150-day lifespan of Section 122 tariffs creates a structural problem. These duties expire in late July unless Congress extends them. The administration plans to use the interval to launch Section 301 investigations into major trading partners and expand Section 232 national security probes, building alternative legal foundations for longer-term tariffs. But none of that will produce results within the Turnberry ratification timeline.

The EU is being asked to ratify a trade agreement whose legal basis has been ruled unconstitutional, whose tariff rates are now applied universally rather than preferentially, and whose future depends on authorities that have not yet been invoked. For a Parliament already divided over the deal’s asymmetry — zero tariffs on US goods entering Europe, 15% on European goods entering America — that may be one too many reasons to walk away.

The emergency meeting starts this morning. The deal may not survive it.

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