Duties, Trump: 'EU wants to see us'. First slot in Paris

After the new suspension of the trade war, the time has come for Europe and the United States to meet. Announcing the new step in the tariff negotiations, as has almost always been the case with respect to a rather silent Brussels, was Donald Trump. 'I have just been informed that the EU has called to set dates for a meeting,' the US president wrote on Truth. Positive news for the tycoon.

'I hope that, finally, as I have asked China, European countries will open up to trade with the United States,' remarked Trump, in these hours at his most dialogic. From the Berlaymont Palace, officially, there was no comment on the matter. The negotiations, in the Commission's strategy, must in any case be conducted away from the spotlight and the time for announcements is far from ripe. However, the clock is ticking and, between now and 9 July - the deadline for the 50% tariff suspension - there are not many windows to see each other.

There is a first slot that, in European headquarters, is seen as the really viable one for a non-peak, but nonetheless high-level meeting: the OECD ministerial to be held in Paris on 3-4 June. There are 36 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, including the United States. The EU is also always invited to the meetings. Participating for the Commission could be Valdis Dombrovskis or Maros Sefcovic, if not both. On the sidelines, a first face-to-face with the US counterpart would serve to prepare the ground for June, the decisive month. From then on, in fact, a meeting could be between the EU leadership on the one hand and Trump on the other. The windows, in this case, are three. It starts with the G7 in Canada in mid-June, where both Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa will fly.

The Commission has been told that Trump will be present. A meeting on the sidelines of the summit is in the cards. Quite different would be a face-to-face between von der Leyen and Trump in Washington, before or after the G7. In the Commission's staff, after the previous Volodymyr Zelensky and Cyril Ramphosa, there is a certain scepticism to face 'The Donald' in the Oval Office. A few days later, on 24 and 25 June, there is the eagerly awaited NATO summit in The Hague. It is a very delicate summit, a possible crossroads for the support strategy for Ukraine and for new defence spending percentages, an instrument that the EU has also put in place to soften Washington on duties. A summit to be followed, on 26 and 27 June, by the European Council. The Commission's goal, barely whispered so far, is to bring Trump to Brussels. With an outline of an agreement on duties to be approved.

The linearity of this path has a thousand unknowns, the first of which is Trump's unpredictability. The channel between Washington and Brussels is now open, however. 'The intention is to intensify talks at the technical level in the coming days. Our strategy does not change: to find a mutually beneficial agreement,' the EU executive reiterated. The possibility of everything collapsing, however, is by no means ruled out. According to Reuters on its website, Brussels has asked major EU companies and CEOs to quickly provide details of their plans to invest in the US. The idea is to bring those numbers to the table with the White House, thus also outlining the possible losses that the US economy would suffer in the event of a break-up.