WASHINGTON, United States
After weeks of tense negotiations between their top trade officials, the European Union and US have finally struck a framework deal - and it comes on the eve of America's latest round of tariff talks with China.
Ultimately it took leaders from Washington and Brussels to sit down face to face to reach Sunday's agreement.
That's something we've also seen with the other deals that President Donald Trump has struck - his personal involvement is what has pushed them over the line – even when the prospects of a breakthrough did not seem bright.
This matters to both sides because so many businesses and jobs depend on what the EU calls "the world's largest bilateral trade and investment relationship".
The Trump administration is celebrating this as a big win and in many ways it is. But it is also not a total defeat for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
"The entire European press is singing the president's praises right now, amazed at the deal he negotiated on behalf of Americans," Vice President JD Vance said in a post on social media site X.
"Tomorrow the American media will undoubtedly run headlines like 'Donald Trump Only Got 99.9 Percent of What He Asked For," he added.
The consolation is that the EU now faces a 15% US tariff, rather than the 30% that had been threatened.
But it is still a major climbdown as the rate is a lot higher than before Trump's so-called Liberation Day in April and not as good as the UK's 10% rate.
Brussels can point to the fact that the lower rate applies to many major European exports, including pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.
It is also means EU carmakers will face a 15% US import tax, rather than the 25% global tariff that was brought in at the start of April.
But in return the EU is "opening up their countries at zero tariff" to American exports, Trump said.
EU steel and aluminium will also continue to face a 50% tariff when sold into the US.
The bloc has spent weeks trying to present itself as a tough negotiator as it prepared retaliatory tariffs and warned it could follow through on them.
The threatened measures would have hit €100bn ($117.6bn; £87.5bn) of US goods sold into the EU.
In May, a 217 page list of what could be targeted was published. It included everything from livestock to aircraft parts and whiskey.
But going into the talks Brussels had major challenges to its bargaining position.
The timing is far from ideal to risk a trade war with the world's biggest economy.
Europe's economic growth has been sluggish for some time and just last week the European Central Bank warned that "the environment remains exceptionally uncertain, especially because of trade disputes."
This deal removes some of that uncertainty and ultimately the European Commission, which negotiates on trade for the EU's 27 members, has decided that is worth the price even if President Trump's 15% tariffs do end up reducing the volume of trade because they make its exports to the US less competitive.
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