Higher energy purchases, lower goods sales. The combined effect of these two items once again reduces Europe’s trade surplus with the United States, which falls to a low of 29 billion euros in the second quarter of the year, a 38% drop compared to the same period in 2025.
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A first obvious element from Eurostat’s processing for the second quarter of the year shows a surge in energy purchases, with price increases and higher volume purchases from the United States jumping to 29 billion euros in the quarter, close to the record reached in mid-2022, when gas prices went out of control following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The European deficit towards Washington for the energy chapter alone thus jumps to 26 billion euros, the highest ever in a single quarter.
Europe’s total imports from Washington thus rise from 88 to 99 billion between April and June, contributing to pushing the trade surplus down. The downward trend of the surplus is also reinforced by the decline in exports, contained by June’s growth but still visible throughout the quarter, which sees a reduction in our sales from 135 to 128 billion euros between April and May.
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As a result, the EU’s quarterly deficit towards the United States thus decreases from 47 to 29 billion, continuing the trend started in the first part of the year. The first half balance shows more than halving, from 127 to 60 billion euros.
What works against 2026, however, is the comparison with an exceptional year, 2025, in which fears of tariffs being introduced by Trump had pushed many companies to overstock goods towards Washington, with the aim of limiting the impact of extra costs as much as possible. The sales sprint is clearly visible in the Eurostat historical series, which shows a record of European sales at 171 billion euros for the first quarter of 2025, a figure clearly out of line with a historical quarterly average of recent years around 130 billion per quarter. The return to normality of exports after overstocking, which also caused a temporary drop below historical averages, thus pushed down the 2026 trade surplus, after the records of the previous year.
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