EU plans to hit Boeing with tariffs if US trade talks fail

The European Union will propose tariffs on Boeing Co. aircraft if talks with the U.S. fail to de-escalate a brewing trade conflict, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

The duties would be part of an EU plan to hit about $114 billion in U.S. goods with additional tariffs, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

That list of products will be shared with member states this week and could change over the next month during consultations.

A surcharge on Boeing sales would help equalize a playing field that EU officials consider unfair to Airbus SE, whose imports to the U.S. are now subject to tariffs, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity since the plan isn’t public.

Slapping Boeing with tariffs would also punish America’s biggest manufacturing exporter should the EU decide to counter unilateral levies imposed by President Donald Trump on the bloc along with dozens of other U.S. trading partners. The simultaneous U.S. tariff war with China has also caught Boeing in a squeeze, with Beijing telling airlines not to accept deliveries from the U.S. planemaker.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm that handles trade matters, has been meeting with U.S. officials since Trump last month announced a 20% universal tariff – reduced to 10% until July – on nearly all EU exports. He also imposed a 25% levy on cars and metals.

A spokesperson for the commission declined to comment on the plans, which were reported earlier by the Financial Times. A Boeing spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached.

Shares of the U.S. planemaker were little changed in premarket U.S. trading after giving up earlier gains.

Negotiations between the EU and U.S. have made scant progress and the expectation is that the bulk of the American tariffs will remain in place.

The EU said on Tuesday that Trump’s ongoing trade investigations will boost the amount of the bloc’s goods facing tariffs to $620 billion, or 97% of the total.

Aerospace products and parts are one of the top U.S. exports to the EU market, totaling $35.3 billion, according to commission figures from 2023. Boeing’s customers include some of the region’s major airlines, such as Air France-KLM and Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

A number of carriers on both sides of the Atlantic have said they won’t accept delivery of aircraft that carry additional tariff charges.

Ryanair Holdings Plc, Boeing’s largest customer in Europe, would consider canceling its $33 billion order and switching to a different aircraft manufacturer if tariffs drive up the cost, Michael O’Leary, chief executive officer of the Irish carrier, told a U.S. lawmaker in a letter last week.

A Ryanair spokeswoman declined to comment on the EU tariff proposal.

For decades, aviation has been largely been excluded from import duties on commercial aircraft and parts under a 1979 World Trade Organization treaty. Still, trade tensions have periodically interrupted the calm: a long dispute between Boeing and Airbus resulted in mutual EU-U.S. tariffs during Trump’s first term that were lifted in 2021.

Airbus Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury earlier this week advocated that the EU impose tariffs on Boeing if negotiations fail to remove duties hurting the aerospace industry.

“Europe is in negotiations, and if these negotiations do not lead to a positive outcome, I imagine that – and this is what we hope for – reciprocal tariffs on aircrafts will be imposed,” he told reporters at an event in Paris.

The commission is expected to share a paper with the U.S. this week to try to kick-start negotiations with Washington, Bloomberg reported earlier.

Proposals from the EU are expected to include lowering trade and nontariff barriers and boosting investments in the U.S.