Last July at Turnberry, Donald Trump sat Ursula von der Leyen down and traded a threatened 30 percent tariff wall for a framework. Fifteen percent on most European goods heading into America. Europe opens its market, buys American energy, invests in America, and stops treating U.S. exporters like a problem to be regulated to death. In May he called her again and put a clock on it: July 4, the 250th birthday, or the rates jump. That was the list with a deadline. A year later the handshake is still being lawyered.
What He Put on the Table
The framework was blunt.
Washington would cap most EU-origin goods at 15 percent instead of the 30 percent hammer he had scheduled for August 1, 2025. Cars, chips, and pharma were supposed to live under that ceiling. Some strategic lines—aircraft and parts, certain chemicals, some generics, some farm goods and raw materials—were sold as zero-for-zero. Steel and aluminum stayed ugly: 50 percent, with talk of quotas and a joint fence against Chinese overcapacity.
Europe’s side was the expensive column. Cut its tariffs on U.S. industrial goods toward zero. Preferential access for American farm and seafood products. European firms “expected” to put an extra $600 billion into U.S. strategic sectors through 2028. The bloc “intends” to take $750 billion in U.S. LNG, oil, and nuclear product through 2028—sold at the time as about $250 billion a year for the rest of the term, replacing Russian molecules. Military kit purchases. Easier rules on green and digital files so American companies are not strangled by Brussels paperwork.
That is why he issued it. The EU runs a surplus in goods, layers VAT and regulation on top of tariffs, lectures Washington on climate while buying energy from whoever is cheap, and spent years building a digital rulebook that lands on U.S. platforms first. Trump’s view is simple: you do not get a cheap American security umbrella and a protected market. Pay, buy, open, or get the rate.
The EU President Ursula von Der Layen is not looking so comfortable there with President Trump. Why? She is sitting with the man who is destroying the globalist agenda! https://t.co/sstqSbpfjl
— Frank Picone (@rams1130) July 27, 2025
Did They Hit July 4?
Not cleanly. Not as a finished commercial treaty.
By early May the European Parliament still had not locked the implementing bills. Trump’s call was the reminder. Brussels said “good progress” and “early July.” In June lawmakers finally approved the tariff legislation that knocks down EU duties on U.S. industrial goods and opens a lane for American food and fish. They also bolted on escape hatches: a sunset at the end of 2029 unless renewed, power to suspend the gifts if Washington breaks the 15 percent ceiling or keeps steel and aluminum derivatives above the promised treatment, and a report due this December on metals.
Those EU concessions started landing around July 1. That is movement. It is not the same as “tariffs to zero, energy paid, factories funded, regulators tamed.”
The $750 billion energy offtake was never a signed purchase order. Companies buy cargoes. Governments issue press releases. A year on, the figure is widely treated as a political number, not a contract. The $600 billion extra investment is the same species: possible, unenforceable, easy to count twice. Steel and aluminum never left the 50 percent world. Regulatory “easing” is a Brussels process, which means committees.
Where It Stands Now
The tariff truce is limping, not dead. After courts knocked out one legal theory for the original reciprocal duties, Washington rebuilt a wall under other statutes. In late July a new 10 percent measure hit a long list of partners, including Europe, and Brussels noted that it stayed inside the Turnberry cap rather than stacking on top of most-favored-nation rates. That is compliance with the ceiling, not a love letter. Some EU voices still called it a breach. The official line was: it fits the joint statement, now give us more exemptions for wine, cheese, devices, and the rest.
So the scorecard is mixed on purpose. Europe did the thing it can do in a legislature: cut some of its own tariffs and write a law with a kill switch. It did not deliver a $750 billion shopping cart or a deregulatory conversion. America did not take steel to 15 percent and did not make the 15 percent cap a religion when other investigations were handy. Both sides claim they have “delivered” and the other guy is late.
Will They Comply?
They will comply with the parts that hurt less than the alternative. A 15 percent ceiling beats 30. Opening a few industrial lines beats a transatlantic smash-up while Europe is rearming. The energy and investment headlines will be massaged until 2028 and then declared a success if anyone can find a spreadsheet.
Trump felt compelled because Europe talks like a partner and trades like a bloc that wants American protection without American access. The list was the price of the umbrella. Brussels is making efforts where votes can be whipped. It is stalling where money has to leave Europe and rules have to shrink. That is not a mystery. That is the EU. The deadline did its job: it forced a vote. It did not turn a golf-course framework into a paid invoice.