European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said the European Union has deliberately adopted a low-key, disciplined approach to the Trump administration’s trade tariffs, learning to resist emotional responses in favor of strategic patience.
“We’ve learned not to react emotionally to every public utterance, but rather rely on the fact that boring is good and we can be the boring part of the relationship” with the U.S., Metsola told The Wall Street Journal during an interview at the WSJ Leadership Institute CEO Summit.
Trade between the U.S. and the 27-member EU has been thrown into turmoil since President Trump placed steep trade duties at the forefront of his policy program at the start of his second term last year. Despite those tensions, total trade reached close to 1.8 trillion euros ($2.1 trillion) in 2025, according to provisional data from European Union authorities.
That relationship remains vital on both sides of the Atlantic, Metsola said. Predictability and stability are key both to European businesses investing in the U.S. and to American companies investing in Europe, she said.
“In a context compounded by so much global instability, these two industrial trading blocs…are what we should keep,” the Maltese politician said. “Because it’s a win-win, and we’ve always believed that win-win is better than win-lose.”
Metsola said Europeans have meanwhile grown more confident from dealing with the Trump administration and have become more comfortable flying the flag for the EU.
“I would have preferred a zero-tariff situation,” she said. “But reality is what it is.”