E.U. Unveils Plan for Retaliatory Tariffs on U.S. Products, if Negotiations Fail

The European Union on Thursday announced a plan to ramp up the pressure on the United States, hours before President Trump called the bloc’s top leader “fantastic” and said that America would work with it toward a trade deal.

Mr. Trump’s tone was a marked shift from the one he has often struck toward the European Union, which he has said was formed to “screw” the United States.

The change did not seem to be linked to the bloc’s announcement, but the pace of events underscored that Mr. Trump’s trade war is rapidly evolving and highly unpredictable.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, on Thursday morning announced two new steps that it could take to hit back at America if trade negotiations fail. Officials laid out 95 billion euros, or $107 billion, worth of goods that they could target with higher tariffs in retaliation to the duties that the United States has announced or imposed. They also said that the bloc would start a World Trade Organization dispute against the United States on Mr. Trump’s across-the-board tariffs, as well on duties levied on cars and car parts.

The European Union’s proposed retaliatory tariffs — which member states will consult on and edit over the next month — could include products such as soybeans, meats and bourbon, as well as manufactured goods like sewing machines, airplane parts and car parts. If implemented, the measures could hit big American companies like Boeing, a senior European official said.

The goal is both to pressure America to reach a deal and to ensure that the European Union is prepared if negotiations fail and higher tariffs become a lasting feature of the trade relationship.

“We believe there are good deals to be made for the benefit of consumers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a statement announcing the plan. “At the same time, we continue preparing for all possibilities, and the consultation launched today will help guide us in this necessary work.”

However, the European Union laid out that groundwork just as early signs of progress began to surface.

The United States and Britain announced the rough contours of a trade deal on Thursday afternoon. The agreement would leave a 10 percent, across-the-board tariff that Mr. Trump imposed on Britain and other countries in place, but it would lower tariffs on British-made cars exported to the United States. Still, details of the arrangement had yet to be finalized.

Europe has had no similar breakthrough — even a preliminary one — but there were hints that progress could be coming.

The president, speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, in the hours after the European Union’s announcement, said that administration officials “intend to make a deal” with Europe.

“We have found that the European Union treated us extremely unfairly,” Mr. Trump said. “We are dealing with them currently.”

European trade officials have held discussions with President Trump’s team over recent weeks, including with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, but there have been no meetings at the highest level. Mr. Trump and Ms. von der Leyen have not held formal talks since he took office, though the two chatted briefly on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ recent funeral in Rome.

Mr. Trump suggested that could change.

“She’s so fantastic, she’s so fantastic, I hope we’re going to meet,” he said. He called the European Union a “big thing” and said, “They want to make a deal very badly.”

Still, Mr. Trump has proved an unpredictable partner in recent months and Europe is preparing for a bad outcome.

The European Union’s latest announcement came after several waves of new tariffs from the United States were unveiled in recent months.

The Trump administration has rolled out its trade measures in phases: First, it imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, then announced them for cars and car parts, and then declared across-the-board tariffs that would applied to different geographies differently. Those so-called “reciprocal” tariffs would have placed a 20 percent tariff on goods coming into the U.S. from the European Union.

The bloc has already taken some actions to respond. Last month, it approved plans for retaliatory measures to the steel and aluminum tariffs that would hit about $23 billion worth of American goods.

But it did so just hours before the Trump administration announced that it would pause the 20 percent across-the-board tariffs for 90 days, applying only a smaller 10 percent duty in their place.

European Union officials responded by pausing their first wave of retaliatory tariffs as a sign of good will. At the same time, officials also made it clear that they would still plan for a broader retaliation in case negotiations stalled.

Thursday’s announcement is a sign that those preparations are continuing.

While Thursday’s list touches only goods, European officials have been clear that if the trade fight deepens, they could hit the American services sector. That is a serious vulnerability for the U.S., since European consumers are major users of American technologies, including cloud computing, search engines and social media.