The secret EU trade negotiator who made Trump wait

Top trade lawmaker Bernd Lange delayed a transatlantic deal for months, frustrating both Washington and Brussels. While he didn’t get everything he wanted, he says he got what Europe needed.

By CAMILLE GIJS, MAX GRIERA and NETTE NÖSTLINGER
in Brussels

^{Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO}

Bernd Lange doesn’t come across as the kind of man who would easily rile an American president.

The 70-year-old German Social Democrat is mild-mannered, methodical and most at home in the committee rooms and hallways of the European Parliament. Yet over recent months, the chair of the Parliament’s trade committee has become the most visible internal obstacle to a transatlantic trade deal that many lawmakers regard as one-sided — and as exposing the EU dangerously to the whims of Donald Trump.

The deal, struck last July by Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at his golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, was swiftly turned into a joint statement and endorsed by European governments. For Brussels, the logic was simple: Deliver on the EU’s side of the bargain, avoid a tariff war, and preserve what remained of transatlantic stability.

Lange had other ideas.

Backed by a coalition of center-left, liberal and Green lawmakers who distrust Trump and resent the asymmetry in the deal, Lange used the Parliament’s role in the implementing legislation to demand safeguards. He wanted to ensure that the EU could claw back its concessions if Washington failed to keep its promises — especially after Trump threatened to annex Greenland and later menaced Spain with a trade embargo for opposing America’s war on Iran.

“Of course, a lot of people took over this U.S. narrative, ‘you have to do it quick and fast and so on, regardless of what’s in it,’” Lange told POLITICO in an interview.

“But of course this is not my style,” he said, leaning back in a leather chair in his Parliament office overlooking the rooftops of Brussels. 

Bernd Lange participates in an exchange of views with Maroš Šefčovič at a meeting of the Committee on International Trade in the European Parliament in Brussels in January 2025. | Martin Bertrand/AFP via Getty Images

The months of delay fueled frustration in Washington, to the point that Trump threatened last month to hike tariffs further should the EU not make good on its promises by July 4.

The bloc dodged that bullet when its institutions struck a hard-fought compromise that incorporated some of Lange’s key demands. That deal will now be put to a final plenary vote on Tuesday; Lange is quietly confident of victory.

POLITICO spoke to a dozen current and former colleagues of Lange, staff, diplomats and officials in Brussels, Paris and Germany to learn more about the man who built this parliamentary coalition. For some, he is a methodical operator who is stubborn and  protective of his files — and willing to push counterparts to the limits in pursuit of a deal. For others, he went too far in daring to destabilize the transatlantic relationship.

The Greenland moment

Under last July’s transatlantic truce, the EU promised to pass legislation to remove tariffs on U.S. industrial goods. In return, Washington agreed to cap tariffs on most EU exports at 15 percent and to lower levies on European cars.

As the lawmaker in charge of negotiating the Parliament’s position on that legislation, Lange soon became decisive in setting — and slowing — the pace of the talks. 

The first cracks in the truce appeared in August, just before Brussels and Washington published their joint statement enshrining the deal, when Trump imposed an eye-watering 50 percent tariff on over 400 products containing steel and aluminum. 

But it was Trump’s threat early this year to annex Greenland, a Danish protectorate, that proved the real turning point.

A February U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Trump’s original tariffs, and the ensuing transatlantic acrimony over the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, hardened the resolve of Lange’s coalition in the Parliament to freeze the process until the deal could be “Trump-proofed.”

The stalling frustrated the center-right European People’s Party, the biggest group in the Parliament — home to von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — which repeatedly urged that the pact be implemented to provide stability to European business.

Lange and Željana Zovko during trilogue talks on customs duty regulations on May 19, 2026. | EP

Lange had overreached for nothing, in the view of Željana Zovko, the EPP’s top negotiator on the file.

“The ordeal was very unnecessary in the end and it pushed us to the brink of a trade war,” Zovko told POLITICO.

“At a moment when we could have focused on ensuring a close partnership on security and on how to work with China, we were fighting over peanuts and we lost the broader geopolitical vision.”

Industrial heartland

Lange’s skepticism toward the Turnberry deal is partly rooted in his home state of Lower Saxony — where automaker Volkswagen and steel producer Salzgitter are based. 

He viewed Trump’s tariffs on products containing steel and aluminum as an egregious breach of the Turnberry truce. More importantly, they threatened industries supporting thousands of jobs in the region.

After weeks of deadlock over whether to proceed with a vote allowing the Parliament to enter into talks with EU capitals, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer reassured Lange during a phone call in mid-March that Washington would soon exempt some products from the tariffs.

That conversation helped pierce Lange’s entrenched opposition to the deal, clearing the way for key parliamentary votes to advance the legislative procedure.

Lange grew up in Friesland, on Germany’s North Sea coast, in a family that owned a gas station and garage, shaping his lifelong passion for motorcycles and classic cars. Photos of his first car still decorate the walls of his Brussels office. 

Photo illustration of Lange on a motorcycle. | Courtesy of Bernd Lange/Christian Artmann

Over the years he has toured the U.S. on two wheels — including the famed Route 66. 

“I like this country,” Lange said of America. “But it’s really divided.”

He joined the Social Democratic Party at the age of 19 and followed his father into IG Metall. He remains close to the labor union, Germany’s largest.

“He keeps us posted about what’s being hotly debated in Brussels and how it affects us, and then we tend to describe, from our perspective, what the issues are within companies, as seen from the employees’ point of view,” said Thorsten Gröger, who leads IG Metall in Lower Saxony and has known Lange for over 20 years.

Putting on a show

Those roots still shape Lange’s negotiating tactics and political style. 

While not by nature confrontational, he is capable of raising his voice behind closed doors to advocate for European industry and labor. He is also a master of detail — be it in the legislative amendments he drafts, or the poems he writes in the Christmas cards he sends each year.

“Sometimes, when he gets really angry at the Commission or the Council, I don’t think he’s putting on a show — precisely because he’s deeply committed to respecting the division of powers and to ensuring that the Parliament is well informed,” said Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, a former liberal MEP who worked with Lange for six years on the trade committee and is now a minister delegate at the French interior ministry.

“One of [his] strengths is that if he is convinced of something, he’s willing to use a lot of time,” said Daniel Caspary, a former EPP MEP who is now at the European Court of Auditors. 

But for some, that conscientious approach amounts to a delaying tactic, which in the case of Turnberry risked a transatlantic blow-up. 

Zovko likened Lange’s negotiating style to that of another German politician — former Chancellor Angela Merkel — who preferred to sit and wait “instead of taking the bull by the horns.” 

“Time pressure is not my favorite friend,” Lange admitted as he reflected on the cut and thrust of this year’s negotiations.

Bad cop

In negotiations between the EU institutions Lange has assumed the role of bad cop to Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič’s good cop, allowing him to apply indirect pressure on Washington that the Commission could not exert directly.

Lange used the leverage of the Parliament to push for safeguards against future threats — in particular by tying implementation of the deal to lowering Washington’s tariffs on steel derivative products through a so-called sunrise clause. 

He also pushed to create a mechanism to suspend tariff concessions should Trump again threaten the EU’s territorial integrity, and set a March 2028 expiry date for the deal — 10 months before Trump is due to step down.

Lange and Šefčovič at the Conference of Committee Chairs in Brussels in April 2026. | EP

Overall, the Commission and the Council pushed back against his demands, wary of stirring the pot with Washington too vigorously. 

“In this discussion, I was sometimes a little bit harsh — not towards the Council, mainly to the Commission,” Lange said. Šefčovič, he added, “has a different job. He has to make compromises and to try to facilitate both sides.” 

Tensions came to a head in the final stage of the negotiations in late May, days after Trump’s latest tariff threat. 

After hours of talks, a visibly frustrated Šefčovič stormed out of the negotiating room, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, venting loudly with his advisers. 

Inside, Lange was insisting on stronger language to require the Commission to raise tariffs on U.S. goods if Washington failed to lower the steel tariffs within a set timeframe — a demand Lange said the Commission “strongly rejected.”

Sabine Weyand, Šefčovič’s top trade official, pushed back against Lange’s demands and at one point threatened to walk out, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. They were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks.

Late-night showdown

The pressure worked. 

In the decisive round of negotiations between the EU institutions that ended in the early hours of May 20, Lange accepted Weyand’s proposal to use the word “empowers” in the text. That gave the Commission greater discretion to assess whether the U.S. was complying with the Turnberry deal than Lange had wanted.

“He was tough, and there was a moment when Bernd had the feeling that the Commission played a lot of theater and put a lot of pressure on us,” Anna Cavazzini, the lead negotiator on the file for the Greens, told POLITICO. 

Anna Cavazzini and Lange during the European Parliament plenary session on the EU–U.S. trade deal on March 26, 2026. |EP

“There was a lot of shouting,” said Cavazzini, who was in the room. “Most of the time, he stood firm. In the end, he gave up.”

The final text states that the Commission may suspend the trade deal if Washington fails to lower duties on European steel and aluminum products by the end of 2026. There is no reference to protecting the EU’s territorial integrity, and the deal’s expiry date was pushed back to the end of 2029 — later than Lange had wanted. 

While his wins on the revised texts are ultimately non-binding, leaving the Commission a lot of leeway in implementing the commitments made, they nonetheless create political accountability on both sides of the Atlantic and send a signal to a partner the EU no longer trusts.

“My favorite phrase to answer this is of course [from] the Rolling Stones: You can’t always get what you want,’” Lange said. 

“But the second phrase is: ‘If you try hard, you get what you need,’ and that’s the crucial one.”

Camille Gijs and Max Griera reported from Brussels and Nette Nöstlinger reported from Berlin.