The EU appears to be on the verge of signing a trade deal with Donald Trump after the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced she would meet the US president on Sunday during his four-day trip to Scotland.
Trump landed in Scotland on Friday evening before the opening of his new golf course in Aberdeenshire. He said he was also planning to meet the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Saturday.
The European Commission said von der Leyen’s visit would be at Trump’s invitation. Ireland’s taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said on Friday a deal would “hopefully be signed off before the weekend is over”.
After getting off Air Force One, Trump described von der Leyen as a “highly respected woman”, said there was a “good 50-50 chance” for a deal, and said the “sticking points have to do with maybe 20 different things”. He said it “would be the biggest deal of them all if we make it”.
Trump heaped praise on Starmer and Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, and said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was “a team player” but that France’s planned recognition of Palestine as a state would not “carry any weight”.
Trump said he was looking forward to meeting Swinney. Before boarding the presidential plane, he told journalists: “The Scottish leader is a good man, so I look forward to meeting him.”
He said he had a “lot of love” for Scotland.
Trump hinted he was looking for more concessions from the EU, saying Japan had had a worse chance than Brussels of getting a deal but succeeded after offering more to the US.
He also criticised what he called “the windmills” – windfarms – which he claimed were “ruining your beautiful fields and killing your birds”, and hit out at the level of immigration in the EU, saying it was an “invasion” which was “killing Europe”.
Von der Leyen said she “had a good call” with Trump before he landed in Scotland and they had “agreed to meet in Scotland on Sunday to discuss transatlantic trade relations, and how we can keep them strong”.
Trump would not meet von der Leyen unless a deal was ready to be signed, sources have said.
He also hinted he was ready to widen the deal he had already agreed with the UK, fuelling speculation he could finally eliminate the 25% tariff he imposed on steel. “This week we want to talk about certain aspects [of the trade deal] which are going to be good for both countries; more fine tuning. We are also going to be doing a little celebrating together because, you know, we get along very well,” he said.
“We are going to have a good time, I think. The prime minister and I get along very well; the Scottish leader too, we have a lot of things, my mother was born in Scotland, and he’s a good man, the Scottish leader … so I’m looking forward to meeting him.”
Asked about a trade deal with the EU, he said: “I would say that we have a 50/50 chance, maybe less than that … I would have said we had a 25% chance with Japan, and they kept coming back and we made a deal.”
The EU is resigned to an agreement in principle on 15% baseline tariffs, including on cars, which will make brands from Volvo to Volkswagen more costly for US traders to import than Range Rovers from Britain, which carved out a deal allowing 100,000 cars a year to be imported to the US at a 10% tariff.
On Friday, Volkswagen laid bare the cost of Trump’s import tariffs saying it had taken a £1bn hit in the first half of the year as a direct result.
Trump struck a deal with Starmer in May, reducing tariffs on cars from 27.5% to 10% in exchange for increases in UK imports of beef and ethanol. While it is being seen as a clever move by Starmer, the ethanol industry says it is fighting for survival against US ethanol, which is used in E10 biofuel in filling stations around the UK.
The president of the National Farmers’ Union, Tom Bradshaw, said his “biggest worry” was that Starmer would sell farmers out by allowing in US dairy products. “We understand the US is pushing very, very hard for dairy access, and for us that is a real red line as they use hormones that we stopped using in dairy production 30 years ago.”
He said the farming sector could not “give any more” and warned Starmer not to sacrifice agriculture.
Before boarding Air Force One, Trump claimed he would have sealed deals with nearly all of the 60 countries he threatened with punitive tariffs by next Friday, his self-imposed deadline for agreements.
He said he had not “really had a lot of luck with Canada” but he was not focused on it, and rather was “working very diligently with Europe, the EU” to get a deal.