Trump says EU tariffs coming ‘soon’ but ‘out of line’ UK might be

Donald Trump has warned that the UK is “out of line” in its trade with the US but suggested the imbalance could be “worked out”.

The US President said imposing tariffs on the UK “might happen” before pointing his barrel at the European Union, who he said could expect levies “pretty soon”.

“The UK is way out of line, and we’ll see,” Mr Trump told reporters as he returned to Washington from Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“But (the) European Union is really out of line. The UK is out of line but I’m sure that one, I think that one can be worked out. But the European Union, it’s an atrocity what they’ve done.”

The EU has warned Mr Trump it is ready to retaliate against “hurtful” tariffs as the US president kick-started a global trade war on Saturday.

Mr Trump announced a 25 per cent levy on goods coming from Mexico and Canada, and a 10 per cent trade tax on Chinese goods, insisting that his trade war would be worth the “pain” to create a “golden age of America”.

Both Canada and Mexico vowed to hit back with levies on US goods, while China threatened to take the US to court and hinted at further retaliation.

Asked if there was a timeline for announcing EU tariffs, Mr Trump said it would be “pretty soon”.

“The United States has been ripped off by virtually every country in the world,” he said.

“We have deficits with almost every country – not every country – but almost, and we’re going to change it. It’s been unfair.”

He said: “It might happen (with Britain)… but it will definitely happen with the European Union. I can tell you that, because they’ve really taken advantage of us – you know, we have (an) over $300 billion deficit”.

“They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products,” Mr Trump added.

“They take almost nothing, and we take everything from the millions of cars, tremendous amounts of food and farm products.”

European leaders including Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, warned that the EU had “its own courses of action” after the new president warned the bloc it would be next in line for tariffs.

Olaf Scholz visited Sir Keir Starmer at Chequers on Sunday – Ben Stansall

EU officials reportedly started drawing up contingency plans for a trade war with Mr Trump last summer, which revolved around acquiring more US goods such as liquefied natural gas.

However, should this fail, the Financial Times reported that EU policymakers could hit various US imports with duties of 50 per cent or more.

Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer is set to be the UK’s first Prime Minister to attend an EU summit since Brexit, when he travels to Brussels on Monday as part of a “reset” in relations.

Discussing whether any issues he has with the UK could be worked out, Mr Trump said Sir Keir had “been very nice”.

He added: “We’ve had a couple of meetings. We’ve had numerous phone calls. We’re getting along very well.”

As markets began to react to the tariffs, Asian stock markets slumped in early trading on Monday and US equity futures pointed sharply lower.

The US dollar shot to a record high against the Chinese yuan in offshore trading, and jumped to the highest since 2003 against Canada’s currency and the strongest since 2022 versus Mexico’s peso.

Japan’s Nikkei share average tumbled as much as 2.3pc in the first minutes of trading, and Australia’s benchmark – which often functions as a proxy for Chinese markets – also slumped more than 2pc.

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