Energy and the impact of tariffs are eroding the EU’s surplus with Washington
Between January and June, the European surplus fell by more than half to 60 billion. Record deficit in the energy sector
Higher energy purchases, lower sales of goods. The combined effect of these two factors has once again reduced Europe’s trade surplus with the United States, which fell to a low of €29 billion in the second quarter of the year – a 38 per cent drop compared with the same period in 2025.
One of the first clear findings from Eurostat’s analysis of the second quarter of the year shows a surge in energy purchases, with rising prices and higher volumes of purchases from the United States causing the figure to jump to €29 billion in the quarter, just shy of the record set in mid-2022, when gas prices spiralled out of control following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe’s energy trade deficit with the US alone thus soars to €26 billion, the highest ever recorded in a single quarter.
Europe’s total imports from Washington thus rose between April and June from 88 to 99 billion, helping to drive down the trade surplus. This downward trend in the surplus was also reinforced by a fall in exports, which, whilst tempered by growth in June, was nevertheless evident across the entire quarter, with our sales falling from 135 to 128 billion euros between April and May.
As a result, the EU’s quarterly trade deficit with the United States has thus fallen from 47 to 29 billion, continuing the trend that began in the first half of the year. The figure for the first half of the year has more than halved, falling from 127 to 60 billion euros.
However, what works against 2026 is the comparison with an exceptional year, 2025, when fears over the introduction of Trump’s tariffs had prompted numerous companies to overstock goods destined for the US, with the aim of minimising the impact of the additional costs as much as possible. This surge in sales is clearly visible in Eurostat’s historical data, which shows a record level of European sales of 171 billion euros for the first quarter of 2025 – a figure clearly out of line with the historical quarterly average of recent years, which has been in the region of 130 billion per quarter. The return to normal export levels following this overstocking – which also led to a temporary dip below historical averages – consequently pushed down the 2026 trade surplus, following the record figures of the previous year.
