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You mean this is too much conspiracy?
Yes, the world isn't that controllable. If it were a bunch of dictators meeting up in secret, maybe, but a group of democratic elected individuals, socialites and business people (all with their own agenda!) could never get something that elaborate done without some journalist somewhere picking up on it. There are many big media corpos, but there is also enough smaller ones who haven't said anything like 'european governments knew about the plan with the 25% tariffs that later were lowered to the planned 10%, because they secretly agreed to decouple from china without the public finding out'.
I also don't believe that the specific ups and downs were planned, especially not the exact timing.
But the introduction of the tariffs was known.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/22/economy/jamie-dimon-tariffs-get-over-it/index.html
How do you interpret it? Did the European governments know but they just expected some trade negotiations?
Easy to say afterwards, but I think they were in denial. People were talking about Trump possibly bullying Canada and Greenland (Or Denmark really) because of the resources and security argument, but those were for decades close allies. Governments could imagine Trump pushing back on German car imports, or put pressure on the Netherlands because of ASML but they expected tarrifs to be bilateral and specific to certain industries; not wide across the board and also not as inconsistent as they were. Trump seems to change his mind overnight and to do that to allies makes it even worse to them. They wouldn't be offended if these were actions against east-asian or south-america countries, they would just dislike it. But to cause so much economic problems purely for the economic benefit of the US is seen as egoistic and even though they could've predicted trump to not care about Europe they were naive because of the decade long partnership between US en EU.
Thanks, I hope that it is like this.
If you don't mind another conspiracy:
The interesting thing about tariffs is that the EU keeps most of the tariff income. Likewise does the president. This is the perfect opportunity to make both the presidential as well as the EU budget independent of parlamentarian oversight by financing it with tariffs.
From the side of us there could be some truth in the fact that money earned by import duties could spent without parliamentary oversight (although parliament isn't stopping anyway, so why?), but the EU is a body of cooperating nation states, no way they would get to spend the money they get from import duties 'however they like'. Aside from that, new tariffs on American stuff have been postponed from now so there isn't any money coming in. But even if that would be the case, there is so much trade happening with other countries that I can't imagine the EU would really be benefiting a lot from getting some extra cash from the trade with US. In any case, it definitely wouldn't be enough to make the entire budget independent from the parliament especially since a large part of that budget comes from member states (and in turn from their taxpayers).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union
The budget is 170 billion euros.
https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/countries-and-regions/united-states_en
Goods and services are together roughly 800 billion euros.
So at 25% tariffs, it could be possible in theory but trade would collapse.
That surprises me to be honest, i think in theory you might be right on them being able to double their budget if the trade would continue as usual with 25% tariff. But still I can't imagine there being a secret plot trying to get this done. What would they even use the money for? I think there are corrupt individuals looking to fill their own pockets, but I don't see how the ruling parties in the EU would benefit from increasing the budget with some backroom agreement.
I was curious as to who gets the money from import duties and it is indeed (mainly) the EU itself. Also surprised to learn already almost one sixth of the budget comes from tariffs. So wanting to up the tariffs would definitely be a short term gain. Do you have a (conspiracy) theorie as to what the eu would do with their extended / independent budget?
I can't imagine that the EU would actually try to finance itself with tariffs. Free trade is what allows for specialization and thus greater prosperity for everybody.
The usage would be that the EU becomes independend from its states. Now the states have some leverage to at least deny further funding if the EU reduces their power.
The countries in the EU have a much bigger day in the dealings of the EU than the states of the US have in the US. The budget wouldn't be their main restriction, because on every issue also the member states have a vote. They would need a majority and in some cases a qualifying majority to back them up if they had the desire to have a looser leash.