On 7 May 2026, Donald Trump extended his ultimatum to the EU: implement the Turnberry trade agreement by July 4, Independence Day, or tariffs will jump to much higher levels.
The threat came after months of repeated postponements, driven by a cycle of new tariff threats from Washington that repeatedly forced Brussels to put its own legislative process on hold.
But what Trump is demanding is, constitutionally speaking, not something Ursula von der Leyen can deliver on her own. And a trade war could start again.
A Deal That Is Not Quite a Deal, Implemented Through Ordinary Law
The Turnberry agreement of July 2025 is not a treaty. It is a joint political statement, legally non-binding by design. The EU’s standard procedure for concluding international trade agreementsrequires a Council mandate, formal signature, and Parliamentary consent. Turnberry bypassed all of it.
To give the deal legal effect, the Commission translated its tariff commitments into two legislative proposals: a General Tariff Regulation cutting duties on US industrial goods and agricultural quotas, and a Specific Tariff Regulation extending the existing lobster exemption to further product categories. Both are now going through ordinary co-legislation between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.
The Parliament adopted its position in March 2026 but MEPs insisted that EU tariff reductions should only enter into force if the US delivers on its own commitments, a reasonable ask given that Washington continued to expand tariff scope and launch new trade investigations against EU exports after Turnberry was signed.
The Parliament also demanded a sunset clause, so both regulations would expire automatically without fresh legislation. A third round of negotiations with the Council is scheduled from 19 May. There is no plausible route to a final agreed text by July 4.
When Trump says ‘ratify,’ he is describing a process that, by EU law, takes as long as it takes. Von der Leyen can promise political momentum but she cannot deliver a signed regulation.
Can Trump Actually Impose New Tariffs?
A wrinkle complicates Trump’s threat: in February 2026, the US Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the IEEPA, the legal basis for the original ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs of April 2025, does not give the president power to impose tariffs. The ruling stripped out the legal foundation for the broadest measures.
Trump moved quickly to replace them. He imposed a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a provision that allows emergency tariffs of up to 15% for a maximum of 150 days, after which Congressional approval is required to extend them. That clock runs out on 24 July 2026, three weeks after his own deadline to the EU.
He has also launched new investigations under Section 301 and expanded the scope of Section 232 national security tariffs, which remain legally valid and indefinite. Trump still has legal tools to raise tariffs on the EU, but they are narrower, more contested, and in some cases time-limited. The threat is real but less unconstrained than it was a year ago.
Europe’s Dangerous Weapon: the Anti-Coercion Instrument
If negotiations collapse and new tariffs land, the EU’s most powerful legal response is the Anti-Coercion Instrument, adopted in 2023 and never yet activated.
The ACI was designed precisely for this scenario: a third country using trade measures to pressure a Member State into a specific political choice. The Commission first has to formally determine that coercion is occurring, attempt diplomatic resolution, and only then deploy countermeasures.
Those countermeasures are deliberately designed to hurt where it matters. Beyond traditional goods tariffs, the ACI allows restrictions on services trade, limits on public procurement access, and controls on intellectual property rights, areas where the US is far more exposed than in straightforward goods competition.
In 2023, the US charged approximately USD 48 billion to the EU in IP fees alone. Targeted suspension of IP protections for US firms, a legally available ACI option, would hit the tech, pharma, and entertainment sectors directly.
The political difficulty is acute yet. Triggering the ACI requires a qualified majority of Member States, and EU unity on confronting Washington has always been fragile. The exposure is not evenly distributed. Germany, Italy, Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Belgium are the six largest EU goods exporters to the US in absolute terms. Ireland sends over 40% of its total global goods exports to the American market.
For countries at that level of exposure, the calculus of retaliation is very different from that of a Member State with limited transatlantic trade ties. Services dependence adds another layer: most EU countries have the US as their first or second largest services partner, meaning a trade war would ripple far beyond manufacturing. And obviously the US could threaten to use its most powerful tool: the withdrawal of troops from the European Eastern flank.
The result is a familiar European dilemma: the instrument exists, the legal threshold is met, but assembling the political coalition to pull the trigger is another matter entirely. The most likely outcome, if July 4 passes without a deal, is neither capitulation nor escalation but managed ambiguity, with the Commission signaling progress to Washington while the trilogue inches forward. Whether that is enough to satisfy an administration that has treated every deadline as leverage is the central uncertainty of the weeks ahead.