Top of­fi­cials at the Eu­ro­pean Union’s ex­ec­u­tive com­mis­sion says they’re push­ing hard for a trade deal with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to avoid a 50% tar­iff on im­port­ed goods. Trump had threat­ened to im­pose the tar­iffs on June 1, but has pushed back the dead­line to Ju­ly 9, re­peat­ing an oft-used tac­tic in his trade war.

Eu­ro­pean ne­go­tia­tors are con­tend­ing with Trump’s ever-chang­ing and un­pre­dictable tar­iff threats, but “still, they have to come up with some­thing to hope­ful­ly paci­fy him,” said Bruce Stokes, vis­it­ing se­nior fel­low at the Ger­man Mar­shall Fund of the Unit­ed States.

Stokes al­so sees more at play than just a dis­agree­ment over trade deficits. Trump’s threats “are root­ed in frus­tra­tion with the EU that has lit­tle to do with trade,’’ Stokes said. “He doesn’t like the EU. He doesn’t like Ger­many.”

What ex­act­ly does Trump want? What can Eu­rope of­fer? Here are the key ar­eas where the two side are squar­ing off.

Buy our stuff

Over and over, Trump has be­moaned the fact that Eu­rope sells more things to Amer­i­cans than it buys from Amer­i­cans. The dif­fer­ence, or the trade deficit in goods, last year was 157 bil­lion eu­ros ($178 bil­lion). But Eu­rope says that when it comes to ser­vices — par­tic­u­lar­ly dig­i­tal ser­vices like on­line ad­ver­tis­ing and cloud com­put­ing — the U.S. sells more than it buys and that low­ers the over­all trade deficit to 48 bil­lion eu­ros, which is on­ly about 3% of to­tal trade. The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion says that means trade is “bal­anced.”

One way to shift the trade in goods would be for Eu­rope to buy more liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas by ship from the U.S. To do so, the EU could cut off the re­main­ing im­ports of Russ­ian pipeline gas and LNG. The com­mis­sion is prepar­ing leg­is­la­tion to force an end to those pur­chas­es -- last year, some 19% of im­ports — by the end of 2027.

That would push Eu­ro­pean pri­vate com­pa­nies to look for oth­er sources of gas such as the U.S. How­ev­er the shift away from Rus­sia is al­ready in mo­tion and that “has ob­vi­ous­ly not been enough to sat­is­fy,” said Lau­rent Ruseckas, a nat­ur­al gas mar­kets ex­pert at S&P Glob­al Com­modi­ties In­sights Re­search.

The com­mis­sion doesn’t buy gas it­self but can use “moral sua­sion” to con­vince com­pa­nies to turn to U.S. sup­pli­ers in com­ing years but “this is no sil­ver bul­let and noth­ing that can yield im­me­di­ate re­sults,” said Si­mone Tagli­api­etra, an en­er­gy an­a­lyst at the Bruegel think tank in Brus­sels.

Eu­rope could buy more from U.S. de­fense con­trac­tors as part of its ef­fort to de­ter fur­ther ag­gres­sion from Rus­sia af­ter the in­va­sion of Ukraine, says Carsten Brzes­ki, glob­al chief of macro at ING bank. If Eu­ro­pean coun­tries did in­crease their over­all de­fense spend­ing — an­oth­er of Trump’s de­mands — their vot­ers are like­ly to in­sist that the pur­chas­es go to de­fense con­trac­tors in Eu­rope, not Amer­i­ca, said Stokes of the Ger­man Mar­shall Fund. One way around that po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cle would be for U.S.

de­fense com­pa­nies to build fac­to­ries in Eu­rope, but “that would take time,’' he said.

The EU could al­so re­duce its 10% tax on for­eign cars— one of Trump’s long-stand­ing griev­ances against Eu­rope. “The Unit­ed States is not go­ing to ex­port that many cars to Eu­rope any­way ... The Ger­mans would be most re­sis­tant, but I don’t think they’re ter­ri­bly wor­ried about com­pe­ti­tion from Amer­i­ca,’' said Ed­ward Alden, se­nior fel­low at the Coun­cil on For­eign Re­la­tions. ”That would be a sym­bol­ic vic­to­ry for the pres­i­dent.’'

A beef over beef

The U.S. has long com­plained about Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tions on food and agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts that keep out hor­mone-raised beef and chick­ens washed with chlo­rine. But ex­perts aren’t ex­pect­ing EU trade ne­go­tia­tors to of­fer any con­ces­sions at the bar­gain­ing ta­ble.

“The EU is un­will­ing to ca­pit­u­late,” said Mary Love­ly, se­nior fel­low at the Pe­ter­son In­sti­tute for In­ter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics. “The EU has re­peat­ed­ly said it will not change its san­i­tary rules, its rules on (ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied) crops, its rules on chlo­ri­nat­ed chick­ens, things that have been long­time ir­ri­tants for the U.S.’’

Back­ing down on those is­sues, she said, would mean that “the U.S. gets to set food safe­ty (stan­dards) for Eu­rope.’’

Val­ue-added tax

One of Trump’s pet peeves has been the val­ue-added tax­es used by Eu­ro­pean gov­ern­ments, a tax he says is a bur­den on US com­pa­nies.

Econ­o­mists say this kind of tax, used by some 170 coun­tries, is trade-neu­tral be­cause it ap­plies equal­ly to im­ports and ex­ports. A val­ue-added tax, or VAT, is paid by the end pur­chas­er at the cash reg­is­ter but dif­fers from sales tax­es in that it is cal­cu­lat­ed at each stage of the pro­duc­tion process. In both cas­es, VAT and sales tax, im­ports and ex­ports get the same treat­ment. The U.S. is an out­lier in that it doesn’t use VAT.

There’s lit­tle chance coun­tries will change their tax sys­tems for Trump and the EU has ruled it out.

Ne­go­ti­at­ing strat­e­gy

Trump’s ap­proach to ne­go­ti­a­tions has in­volved threats of as­tro­nom­i­cal tar­iffs - up to 145% in the case of Chi­na - be­fore strik­ing a deal for far low­er lev­els. In any case, how­ev­er, the White House has tak­en the stance that it won’t go be­low a 10% base­line. The threat of 50% for the EU is so high it means “an ef­fec­tive trade em­bar­go,” said Brzes­ki, since it would im­pose costs that would make it un­prof­itable to im­port goods or mean charg­ing con­sumers prices so high the goods would be un­com­pet­i­tive.

Be­cause the knot­ti­est is­sues di­vid­ing the EU and U.S. — food safe­ty stan­dards, the VAT, reg­u­la­tion of tech com­pa­nies — are so dif­fi­cult “it is im­pos­si­ble to imag­ine them be­ing re­solved by the dead­line,’' Alden said. ”Pos­si­bly what you could have — and Trump has shown he is will­ing to do this — is a very small deal’’ like the one he an­nounced May 8 with the Unit­ed King­dom.

Econ­o­mists Oliv­er Rakau and Nico­la No­bile of Ox­ford Eco­nom­ics wrote in a com­men­tary Mon­day that if im­posed, the 50% tar­iffs would re­duce the col­lec­tive econ­o­my of the 20 coun­tries that use the eu­ro cur­ren­cy by up to 1% next year and slash busi­ness in­vest­ment by more than 6%.

The EU has of­fered the US a “ze­ro for ze­ro” out­come in which tar­iffs would be re­moved on both sides in­dus­tri­al goods in­clud­ing au­tos. Trump has dis­missed that but EU of­fi­cials have said it’s still on the ta­ble.

Love­ly of the Pe­ter­son In­sti­tute sees the threats and blus­ter as Trump’s way of ne­go­ti­at­ing. “In the short run, I don’t think 50% is go­ing to be our re­al­i­ty.’’

But she says Trump’s strat­e­gy adds to the un­cer­tain­ty around U.S. pol­i­cy that is par­a­lyz­ing busi­ness. “It sug­gests that the U.S. is an un­re­li­able trad­ing part­ner, that it op­er­ates on whim and not on rule of law,’’ Love­ly said. “Friend or foe, you’re not go­ing to be treat­ed well by this ad­min­is­tra­tion.’’

Wise­man con­tributed to this re­port from Wash­ing­ton.

By DAVID MCHUGH and PAUL WISE­MAN

FRANK­FURT, Ger­many (AP)