I understand your reasoning but tariffs all around are just not the right tool as they affect your own market first and while the eu is the second biggest consumer market after the us, it just hasn’t the same margins to cut into for tariffs to properly bite.

So all the EU can do with them is to make it hurt while trying to avoid exactly the damage to the own economy that the US is causing. That way you try to leverage the reciprocal approach while trying to carry the economy for as long as possible.

That Trump is willing to escalate is apparent with China, but contrary to the EU, China has monopolies on goods and resources that it can (and already does) utilize to supplement tariffs. That will cause bigger damage than tariffs over time.

Of course the biggest absurdity is that a trade war like this harms the engine of every single country affected, destroying value AND lives just as much as a real war does but without the visibility.