Between ‘rollover UK’ and ‘retaliatory China’: will EU hardball secure trade deal with US?

Optimism is growing in Brussels, but high-risk strategy has only weeks to play out before pause in tariff threat ends

In Brussels' corridors of power, quiet optimism is growing that the EU's hardball strategy to secure a US trade deal is working. While Britain quickly moved to try to cushion the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs with a deal agreed last month - and US-Chinese relations are a tit-for-tat situation - the EU has taken a different stance. We are positioning ourselves between rollover UK' and retaliatory China'," said a Brussels source.

The stakes are not just the 706bn in transatlantic trade between the EU and US but the fallout from what diplomats and businesses say is a dangerous assault on the global rules-based system that governs western democracy.