DAVOS, Switzerland — After years in which trade deals just kept slipping away, all the European Union needed was the shock of Donald Trump’s return to the White House to get its act together.
Chief executive Ursula von der Leyen and her trade czar Maroš Šefčovič haven’t merely hung about. They moved fast after Trump’s election triumph in November to close out deals that have been stuck in the works for years — even decades — and want to build new relationships to compensate for his threats to throw up a tariff wall around the United States.
“Europe will keep seeking cooperation — not only with our longtime like-minded friends, but with any country we share interests with,” von der Leyen said in a keynote address at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Trump was sworn in Monday.
In her first term, von der Leyen’s commission sought to attach human rights and green conditions to trade deals — which proved to be more than its partners were prepared to take. As a result, a trip in late 2023 to seal a Latin American trade deal was called off at the last minute. Another, with Australia, collapsed after EU bigwigs flew around the world for a signing ceremony that never happened.