BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s government fee stated Thursday it’ll put commerce retaliation measures on maintain for 90 days to match President Donald Trump’s pause on his sweeping new tariffs and go away room for a negotiated answer.
European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen stated that the fee, which handles commerce for the bloc’s 27 member nations, “took observe of the announcement by President Trump.”
New tariffs on 20.9 billion euros ($23 billion) of US items shall be placed on maintain for 90 days as a result of “we wish to give negotiations an opportunity,” she stated in an announcement.
However she warned: “If negotiations should not passable, our countermeasures will kick in.”
Trump imposed a 20% levy on items from the EU as a part of his onslaught of tariffs of 10% and upward in opposition to international buying and selling companions however stated Wednesday he’ll pause them for 90 days to present nations an opportunity to barter options to U.S. commerce considerations.
Nations topic to the pause will face Trump’s 10% baseline tariff.
Earlier than Trump’s announcement, EU member nations voted to approve a set of retaliatory tariffs on $23 billion in items in response to his 25% tariffs on imported metal and aluminum that took impact in March. The EU, the most important buying and selling companion of the U.S., described them as “unjustified and damaging.”
The EU tariffs have been set to enter impact in levels, some on April 15 and others on Could 15 and Dec. 1. The EU fee didn’t instantly present an inventory of the products.
Members of the EU — the world’s largest buying and selling bloc — have stated they like a negotiated deal to resolve a commerce warfare that damages the economies on each side. The bloc’s high commerce official has shuttled between Brussels and Washington for weeks attempting to move off a battle. The EU has supplied Trump a “zero for zero” deal during which each side would eradicate tariffs on industrial items together with autos. Trump has stated that’s not sufficient to reply U.S. considerations and raised the potential for Europe shopping for massive extra quantities of U.S. liquefied pure fuel.
The focused items are a tiny fraction of the 1.6 trillion euros ($1.8 trillion) in U.S.-EU annual commerce. Some 4.4 billion euros in items and companies crosses the Atlantic every day in what the European Fee calls “a very powerful industrial relationship on the planet.”
The EU has focused smaller lists of products in hopes of exerting political stress and avoiding financial injury from a wider escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs.
The EU can be engaged on an additional set of countermeasures in response to Trump’s blanket 20% tariff on all European items, now suspended. That might embrace measures aimed toward U.S. tech corporations and the companies sector in addition to commerce in items.
Nonetheless, von der Leyen stated that Europe intends to diversify its commerce partnerships.
She stated that the EU will proceed “participating with nations that account for 87% of world commerce and share our dedication to a free and open trade of products, companies, and concepts,” and to elevate boundaries to commerce inside its personal single market.
“Collectively, Europeans will emerge stronger from this disaster,” von der Leyen stated.
McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany
