BRUSSELS — It turns out that Donald Trump might be the best thing to happen to free trade — for Europe, at least.  By throwing up a tariff wall around the United States in support of his America-first agenda, the U.S. president is inadvertently prompting other countries around the world to team up in a bid to offset the huge hit to their exports that it will inflict. The EU, under pressure from a more protectionist France and international climate protests, had sought over the last five years to use trade policy to project the bloc’s values on human rights and sustainability — frustrating partners like India, Indonesia or the South American Mercosur bloc.  But now that the United States, its historic ally, wants to play solo — and is convulsing global markets and trade networks with its barrage of duties — the European Union is being quick to step up and cast itself as the heavyweight liberal trade bloc that is open for business. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said many countries were now reaching out to Brussels as a reliable partner that would not “change their minds overnight.” “In a more and more unpredictable global environment, countries are lining up to work with us,” she said in comments to POLITICO Europe on the 10th anniversary of its launch. This shifting momentum is delighting the EU’s more economically liberal countries who have often chafed at the more protectionist instincts of the French. “We have the free-traders, Sweden, Nordic, Baltic countries. We have some protectionist countries. And then we have some swing states in the middle. And a lot of those swing states are actually moving in our direction,” Swedish Trade Minister Benjamin Dousa told POLITICO on the margins of a recent meeting of EU trade ministers in Luxembourg.  “There is a sense of urgency among member states that we have to open new trade routes, we have to sign new free trade agreements,” he said. Trump’s tariffs — of 10 percent on most countries, 145 percent on China, and 25 percent on steel, aluminum and autos are expected to knock 3 percentage points this year off global merchandise trade.  The World Trade Organization now forecasts that global trade will shrink by 0.2 percent this year. It could slump by as much as 1.5 percent if Trump reinstates the higher “reciprocal” tariffs — for the EU of 20 percent — that he has suspended for 90 days to allow time to negotiate trade deals. MOVING UP A GEAR Since being confirmed in December, von der Leyen’s second European Commission, which handles trade policy on behalf of the bloc’s 27 members, has been on a deal-making roll.  Brussels has concluded decades-long talks with the Mercosur bloc, as well as with Mexico and Switzerland. It has also relaunched negotiations with Malaysia and opened discussions with the United Arab Emirates. Von der Leyen has pledged to wrap up a hard-to-get FTA with India this year, and is eager to explore “closer cooperation” with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a free-trade deal which includes a dozen countries from the Indo-Pacific and recently added the U.K. as a member. And Australia’s May 3 general election could fire the starting gun on a new push for a trade deal after talks collapsed at the finishing line in late 2023. “Trump’s policy will lead everyone to agree to develop trade relationships with the rest of the world and therefore also further increase the number of free-trade agreements,” said Jean-Luc Demarty, who headed the Commission’s trade department during the first Trump administration. Overall, EU countries such as France, Belgium or Austria, which once dragged their feet on opening up their sensitive markets, are starting to see deals as a geopolitical necessity — not just an economic bonus.  A case in point is France, whose entire political class had rejected the EU-Mercosur trade deal as politically and economically toxic, but which is now quietly softening its stance in light of Trump’s trade offensive.  “It doesn’t make sense to remain fixated on Mercosur, which was negotiated on good terms overall,” said Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, a liberal member of the European Parliament who hails from the same Modem party as Prime Minister François Bayrou.  “We need to change our mindset, otherwise we’ll miss out on the advancement of the world,” she added. The transatlantic trade relationship is Europe’s biggest, with two-way commerce totaling €1.6 trillion. The U.K., China and Switzerland come next. Although the EU and China have explored whether to reset their ties in light of Trump’s tariffs, a trade deal isn’t in the cards — and that’s leading the EU to cast its net more widely. A CHANGE IN ATTITUDE For EU officials familiar with Trump’s playbook, the shift gives an impression of déjà vu. When Trump took office in 2017, the European Union had just emerged from a “great, grotesque saga about Canada,” said Demarty, remembering how Belgium’s Wallonia region for months held up ratification of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, between Canada and the EU. At the time, “we had felt a change in attitude towards trade,” he said.  “And from the moment Trump became very hostile to trade, those who were much less enthusiastic about trade — out of hostility to Trump — tended to soften their stance,” he added.  But for all the short-term relief for the bloc’s free-traders, that doesn’t mean the path to free trade deals will get any easier — at least not yet. A huge worry is that Trump’s tariffs might cause Chinese exports that have been locked out of the U.S. market to be diverted to Europe. That scenario is leading to calls for greater protection around the EU’s single market. And even though Trump rekindled hopes that the transatlantic trade fight could reach a happy ending when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited the White House last week, a far-reaching trade deal is not in the cards. That’s something Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has been pushing for, adamant that the “best thing” Europe could do with Washington is to achieve zero tariffs.  Since talks on the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) fell apart in 2016, the European Union has boosted its own environmental and human rights standards. And even if it softened or delayed key aspects of its green agenda, that wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the business-first administration in Washington.  For Demarty, reviving that transatlantic deal would be a “grave mistake.”  “It’s not going to go anywhere. I was conducting it for over four years and I found it was an impossible negotiation,” he said. Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting. Graphics by Lucia Mackenzie and Giovanna Coi.

OTTAWA — French President Emmanuel Macron’s latest visit to Canada might give him a first taste of his new normal. During his trip to Montreal and Ottawa on the heels of the United Nations General Assembly, Macron is expected to devote time to defending the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada. Though the chapters of CETA on the free trade of goods provisionally entered into force in 2017, some national parliaments of EU countries still have to ratify it and, at least on paper, can block its further implementation. But with a majority of EU member countries already having backed CETA, it’s highly unlikely France could muster the votes to overturn the entire accord — despite any fantastical promises offered by protectionist French lawmakers and members of the country’s new government, which was announced on Saturday. While CETA has benefited many French farmers and manufacturers, the agreement has fallen victim to hostile politics and public opinion. It is opposed by French farmers who fear competition from their Canadian counterparts, by environmental NGOs and almost all political parties except for Macron’s own. The French Senate rejected the treaty in a vote earlier this year and the new government leans more protectionist than its predecessors. With new Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard and junior Trade Minister Sophie Primas openly opposing the deal and a parliamentary majority ready to vote it down, it will be even harder for Macron to give Canada the type of assurances on CETA’s future that Ottawa will likely be looking for. “He has to be extremely careful, to show intelligence, and not to declare his support for CETA because he is going to turn a lot of people against him,” said André Chassaigne, a communist lawmaker who authored a resolution to hold a new parliamentary vote on CETA. Roland Lescure, France’s previous industry minister and a lawmaker representing French citizens living in Canada and the United states, said he is concerned that the backlash against CETA and Paris’ protectionist turn could imperil future trade negotiations. “It is a treaty that has benefited all French sectors and done no harm … if we can’t sign a free trade treaty with Canada, with whom can we?” he told POLITICO. PARLIAMENTARY BACKLASH  When the Senate delivered its first blow to CETA, it forced then-Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to quickly embark on a damage-control mission to reassure Ottawa that France still backed the deal.   Attal is now gone, and in his place is Michel Barnier — a member of the right-wing Les Républicains, a party that played a decisive role in voting down the trade pact in the Senate. Macron’s opponents, including Les Républicains, wanted to follow up their first strike against CETA with a vote in the more powerful lower house of the French legislature, the National Assembly. The previous government refused to bring the issue to a vote and instead proposed delaying discussions until after the European election in June. After the far-right National Rally triumphed at the EU vote, Macron called a snap parliamentary election which resulted in a hung parliament with no clear majority. It did, however, return more protectionists to the National Assembly, meaning that the EU-Canada trade deal would have little or no chance of surviving a parliamentary vote. This time, instead of defending the deal, the French government — led by Barnier, Genevard and Primas — could join the chorus of CETA opponents and try to bring it down. That is despite the fact that, in the EU, the bloc’s 27 member countries delegate responsibility for trade policy to its Brussels-based executive. Seventeen have already ratified CETA — which means that France, even if it wanted to overturn the deal, would likely fail in the face of the overwhelming pro-deal majority. The only immediate consequence of a rejection would be that some provisions of the deal, including those setting up a dispute resolution authority in charge of deciding cases related to the deal, wouldn’t enter into force. BARNIER’S DILEMMA French exports to Canada have increased by 33 percent between 2017, the year the deal went into effect, and 2023, according to data from the French foreign ministry. But France’s major farmer lobby FNSEA opposes CETA as it fears that rise Canadian imports could come at the expense of French agriculture. On the other side of the Atlantic, some are also unhappy with a deal that they believe have benefited EU exporters more than Canadians. “I struggle to find anybody in Canadian agriculture that thinks that this agreement has benefited Canada,” John Masswahl of the Canadian Cattlemen Association said. “The Europeans have got beef and cheese [exports] and we have got nothing.” Even if the National Assembly gets an opportunity to vote on the deal and reject it, there would be no immediate consequences. The French government can still decide whether or not to notify the failure of the ratification process to Brussels — as fellow EU member Cyprus has done. If the new French government decided to ignore the parliamentary vote and refused to notify, “it would of course be very much criticized,” said Elvire Fabry, a trade expert at the Jacques Delors institute. Under EU rules, if an EU country tells Brussels that it failed to ratify CETA, “provisional application must be and will be terminated.” But things are more complex as, after that, the European Commission would have to draft a proposal to terminate the provisional application of the deal and that proposal has to be adopted by a qualified majority — in other words, at least 15 member countries representing 65 percent of the EU population. Some hope that Barnier and Les Républicains could change their minds now that they are governing with Macron, Barnier’s party did initially support the pact when negotiations between Brussels and Ottawa began in 2009, when Nicolas Sarkozy was president, only to oppose it under Macron for political purposes. Whatever happens, France’s attitude towards CETA will be watched closely in Brussels as it will show whether, with this new government, France will oppose other free-trade deals that are under discussion. While Macron may be supportive of CETA, he has strongly opposed an accord between the EU and the South American countries of the Mercosur bloc. “In France today there are not many people still in favor of trade agreements,” said Fabry. Giorgio Leali reported from Paris. Kyle Duggan reported from Ottawa.