BRUSSELS — EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič said Monday the European Commission is seeking to formally engage G7 countries such as Canada and Japan to coordinate responses to U.S. President Donald Trump’s erratic tariffs.

“We’ve been always talking to our major trading partners, especially those from the G7. What is happening is that there is this new sense of urgency,” he told reporters as he entered a meeting of the bloc’s trade ministers.

Šefčovič, the EU’s lead negotiator with the United States, said that the EU had understood the two sides were nearing an agreement in principle, until Trump did a U-turn and threatened on Saturday to impose a 30 percent tariff on EU goods should the two sides fail to seal a deal by Aug. 1. Brussels already floated the G7 idea at an emergency meeting of EU ambassadors on Sunday, as reported in POLITICO’s Morning Trade newsletter.

Brussels is now trying to strike the right balance between keeping negotiating lines open and ensuring retaliation is still seen as a credible threat. This was on full display over the weekend, when the EU executive, which coordinates trade on behalf of the EU’s 27 member states, delayed the implementation of a first package of countermeasures, while inching forward on a second raft of retaliatory tariffs on around €72 billion of U.S. exports. 

“The feeling on our side was that we are very close to an agreement. We have been negotiating this agreement in principle for weeks,” the trade commissioner stressed, adding that Brussels and Washington were still negotiating on tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum as well as cars.

“I appreciate, though, that I was getting the heads-up just before the letter was coming,” he said.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Spanish Minister of Trade Carlos Cuerpo cautioned that the EU should not be too confrontational. 

“We are in a scenario of pushing for a deal with the United States, and I think the rest of the major trading partners are in a similar situation,” he said.

“I believe that this is not the time to talk about creating a common front, but rather about how to move forward in these negotiations and make progress in contact with our partners in order to deepen trade relations with them.”

Jakob Weizman contributed to this report.