President Trump announced Friday that tariffs on cars and trucks imported from the European Union will rise to 25 percent as early as next week, accusing the bloc of failing to honor a trade deal both sides finalized last summer. The move puts South Carolina’s two Republican senators — Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott — in a familiar political bind: they have praised both the president’s tariff strategy and the German automakers that form the backbone of the state’s manufacturing economy.
Trump made the announcement via social media, stating the EU was not complying with the Turnberry Agreement, the July 2025 framework negotiated with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. That deal set a 15 percent tariff ceiling on most goods, including vehicles, offering EU automakers a reprieve from the 30 percent duties Trump had threatened under his broader trade offensive. The Supreme Court this year struck down the legal authority Trump used to impose the original rates, prompting his administration to rely on Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — a national security statute — as the substitute mechanism. The new 25 percent rate on cars and trucks would be levied under that authority.
The diplomatic context matters: just one week before Trump’s announcement, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič traveled to Washington and came away publicly reassured. Šefčovič said USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer and other senior U.S. officials had told him that a deal is a deal for both sides. The abrupt shift left Brussels scrambling. The European Commission said in a statement that it has been implementing its commitments in line with standard legislative practice and will keep its options open to protect EU interests if the U.S. acts inconsistently with the agreement. Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, called the tariff hike unacceptable and said the U.S. had repeatedly breached the pact, pointing to steel and aluminum surcharges that now average 26 percent on more than 400 affected products.
For Graham and Scott, the announcement tests a political posture they have maintained since the tariff debate began: supporting Trump’s broader use of trade leverage while defending the European manufacturers that transformed South Carolina’s economy. Graham has described BMW’s 30-year presence in Spartanburg as a major benefit to the state and called the company one of the best corporate citizens in South Carolina. Scott, whose Senate Banking and Finance committee assignments place him at the center of economic policy debates, aligned himself with the administration’s tariff rationale and criticized the Supreme Court ruling that curtailed Trump’s original authority.
Governor Henry McMaster has taken a similar line, publicly backing Trump’s goal of American self-sufficiency while crediting BMW with putting South Carolina on the map as a manufacturing state. The plant in Spartanburg County employs 12,000 workers directly and, according to research from the University of South Carolina, generates 36 additional jobs elsewhere in the state for every 10 on the assembly floor — a multiplier that makes auto manufacturing the state’s most consequential industrial sector.
The political tension is real. BMW exports roughly 90,000 vehicles a year from Spartanburg to Europe; those shipments benefit from zero EU tariffs on American-made vehicles under the Turnberry Agreement. A breakdown of that deal, triggered by U.S. noncompliance, could eliminate that exemption and expose Plant Spartanburg’s export business to retaliatory EU duties. The European Parliament is still finalizing legislation to implement the deal and had aimed to complete it in June. Whether that timeline survives Trump’s latest escalation is now an open question on both sides of the Atlantic.
William Timmons, who represents Spartanburg in Congress as the SC-4 district’s Republican member, has yet to issue a public statement on the tariff increase. His Financial Services and Oversight committee assignments do not put him directly in the trade-policy chain, but his constituents include thousands of BMW and supplier workers whose livelihoods track U.S.-EU trade relations closely.
