“Let’s not go to that conversation without already having a retaliation option,” Ignacio García Bercero, the Commission’s U.S. point person during Trump’s first term, told POLITICO. “Because if the negotiations fail and if the United States feels that we don’t have a credible retaliation option, then we are not going to go anywhere.”

Here’s an overview of Brussels’ options, along with how we rate their caliber, trigger-happiness and expected effectiveness:

Retaliation against US products

The EU struck back at Trump in 2018 — an election year — at products made in the key U.S. battleground states. Recall, for instance, how the EU found ways to increase tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Zippo lighters, Levi jeans and bourbon. Brussels might well plan something similar to inflict similar economic pain ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

In retaliation against Trump’s worldwide tariffs on steel and aluminum, the EU targeted Harley-Davidson motorcycles with a 56 percent import tariff. The company moved some production to Thailand, leading Republican politician Paul Ryan of Wisconsin — where Harley-Davidson is also from — to say that it was “further proof of the harm from unilateral tariffs.” Harley-Davidson later lost a case before an EU court in Luxembourg.

For what it’s worth, Harley-Davidson’s sales declined in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region to just 27,000 motorbikes from 44,000 in 2019.

García Bercero said the Commission will already “have a list prepared that would, I’m sure, have been prepared intelligently.” According to his analysis, the EU is unlikely to put up a broad tariff wall for incoming goods: “It is going to be more sophisticated [than] that.”

The European Council wrapped up shortly before midnight in Brussels.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested to the summit that there could be merit in having an alternative to the World Trade Organization that could handle trade disputes ― according to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

French President Emmanuel Macron was far softer in his language on what he’d settle for in a U.S. trade deal. Discussion on climate targets was described as “very heated.”

It’s was Merz’s first EU summit and while he’ll go back to Berlin largely unscathed, he did go out on a limb as he pushed for the EU to get a quick and dirty trade deal with the U.S. ahead of Trump’s July 9 deadline. France, for its part, is pushing back against a rushed deal.

Late in the evening, POLITICO was first to reveal the Commission has received the latest U.S. counterproposal as part of those negotiations.

POLITICO was on site, reporting the day as it happened.

She floated the idea that the EU’s 27 countries could join forces with 12 members of the Asian-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership bloc (CPTPP) — which now includes the U.K. — to form a new world trade initiative.

The new grouping would redesign a rules-based global trading order, reforming or perhaps even replacing the now largely defunct World Trade Organization, she said.

Crucially, the U.S. would not automatically be invited.

Such a plan would “show to the world that free trade with a large number of countries is possible on a rules-based foundation,” von der Leyen said at the end of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels in the early hours of Friday morning. “This is a project where I think we should really engage on, because CPTPP and the European Union is mighty.”

Von der Leyen then explained that it would be up to the EU and the CPTPP to decide whether the U.S. would be allowed to join their project. “As far as I understand, the Americans left at a certain point.”

Innovative and unpredictable

The idea of more formal cooperation with the Indo-Pacific group had already been floated in recent months by the EU executive as a way to counter Trump’s tariffs. But in case there was any doubt that such a gambit was firmly tied to fighting back against Trump’s disruption, another man called Donald dispelled it.

But just as Merz is on the cusp of taking power in Germany, his cherished America has turned from indispensable friend to frenemy. Merz and other European mainstream leaders increasingly see the U.S. no longer a beacon — that “shining city upon a hill,” as Reagan liked to call it — but rather as another force joining Russia and China to steadily chip away at their ever-more brittle democracies.

“This is really now the change of an era,” Merz said on stage at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month after U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave a speech that cast Europe’s centrist parties — not Russia or China — as the greatest threat to European security. “If we don’t hear the wake-up call now,” Merz added, “it might be too late for the entire European Union.”

Vance’s appearance in Munich is likely to go down in European history as an epochal shift just as significant as Vladimir Putin’s 2007 speech at the same conference, when the Russian president effectively declared war on the U.S.-led liberal order. Now, it’s the U.S. administration itself that is turning its back on that consensus.

German leaders, including Merz, have been especially slow to accept the new reality, declaring until recently that the transatlantic alliance will endure despite clear signals from the Trump administration that it will halt military aid for Ukraine, question the U.S. commitment to defend Europe, and bolster far-right, Kremlin-friendly forces.

For Merz, an avowed transatlanticist, there could hardly be a ruder awakening. The question that will define his tenure will be whether he can lead Germany and Europe in defending the fraying liberal order without the U.S. — or whether, as Merz suggested in Munich, it’s already almost too late.

Merz’s rise and fall and rise again

This wasn’t how Merz had imagined his long-sought moment of victory.

That offer had been made because the joint chiefs of staff and State Department officials decided turning the world’s largest island, located on the shortest polar route between Washington and Moscow, into the 51st state was one of military necessity for the United States. Time magazine dubbed the island the world’s largest “stationary aircraft carrier.”

The Americans judged the island was completely worthless to Denmark and had been neglected — a common theme in other U.S. bids to purchase Greenland. “There are few people in Denmark who have any real interest in Greenland, economic, political or financial,” announced William Trimble, a senior State Department official.

That didn’t persuade the reluctant Danes — all the country’s political parties dismissed the proposal with Rasmussen dubbing it absurd in a parliamentary debate.

Meanwhile, the Americans were equally obdurate in their refusal to withdraw from U.S. bases first established on the island in 1941 to ensure Nazi Germany couldn’t use Greenland to attack the American mainland nor gain control of important raw materials. That refusal eventually prompted Denmark to join NATO.

Long line of suitors

Trump is just the latest in a long line of suitors — and not just American — who have come knocking at Denmark’s door wanting take the island off its hands.

Trump is likely to prove among the most persistent and aggressive — he’s now upped the ante by declining to say whether he would ever invade Greenland, the first time such a threat, in jest or otherwise, has been made by a U.S. leader. But it got him the headlines.