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European countries have emerged as relative winners of Donald Trump’s latest move to rebuild his tariff wall that was struck down by the US Supreme Court earlier this year.
Rates for France, the UK, Germany and Spain have all fallen, according to an analysis of the new duty regime announced by Washington on Thursday by the independent trade monitoring body Global Trade Alert.
By contrast, levies for Asian and Latin American countries have risen. China, Vietnam and Indonesia all saw rates increase by between 0.5 and 1 percentage point, as did Chile and Colombia.
Brazil, which Trump hit with separate tariffs earlier this month, is by far the biggest loser, with its effective rate jumping from 11 to 17.7 per cent, according to the analysis.
The new tariffs were imposed using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which analysts said was designed to put Trump’s tariff wall on a more secure legal footing, with 60 separate directives aimed at each individual trade partner.
George Riddell, managing director of the Goyder trade consultancy, said the move would protect the administration against the risk of another blanket collapse of the tariff regime. The Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that the levies Trump imposed after his “liberation day” event in April 2025 were illegal.
“The practical effect [of the new rules] is to force litigation to be economy-specific. A successful challenge to the action against one economy would, on the face of the notice, be unlikely to unwind the other fifty-nine,” Riddell wrote in a note to clients.
The new Section 301 regime, which was based on a probe of countries allegedly using forced labour, replaces 10 per cent global tariffs imposed as a stopgap immediately after the top court’s decision in February. Those 10 per cent levies expired on Friday.
Under the new regime, the US’s overall effective tariff rate holds steady at 10.8 per cent — approximately the same rate as before — but significantly below the 15.8 per cent rate at the time of the Supreme Court ruling.
Johannes Fritz, Global Trade Alert’s chief executive, said that while the new measures broadly replicated the previous rates, some European countries had emerged as relative winners due to the mix of their exports to the US and whether they took advantage of the many exemptions for products such as diamonds, cork and pig iron.
Under the new rules, the 10 per cent EU tariff rate would also not be “stacked” on top of other levies, unlike in the stopgap regime, handing the EU a relative advantage.
“Rates rise, particularly for Brazil, but also for China. In general, they fall for the Europeans, even if only slightly,” said Fritz.
Belgium, Spain and Italy stand to gain the most, with their effective rates dropping by between 1 and 1.5 percentage points.
“Italy and Spain benefited from a drop in tariff rates on footwear and woven garments as well as knitted apparel, as well as handbags,” Fritz added.
The EU struck a conciliatory tone when the new tariffs were announced on Thursday, welcoming the fact that the new rates did not exceed the 15 per cent ceiling agreed when the US and EU struck a deal at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last summer.
However, the reprieve may only be temporary. The EU is also bracing for a separate investigation into “structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors”, which is expected to lead to more duties.
Taken together, these could result in an overall higher rate than the 15 per cent ceiling.
If that happens, the European Commission has briefed EU ambassadors that a retaliatory package remains ready to be deployed on €93bn of US exports, including cars, bourbon and soyabeans.
