A month has passed from the tariff truce between Donald Trump and the EU without the negotiations having fruit and the European Commission teaches a new letter: launches a public consultation on the imposition of tariffs worth 95,000 million euros to imports of US goods. The list, which includes thousands of products, including the agri -food sector and also points to the Boeing company, will now be negotiated with the Member States and the final decision will be imposed in the event that an agreement with Washigton is not reached.
Brussels has prepared the new list that would be a part of the response to the generalized tariffs of 20% announced by Trump the ‘Liberation Day’ as well as the 25% rate to vehicles from the EU and that affect exports for a value of 379,000 million euros. To this we must add the tariffs for now and that affected some 1,600 American products for a value of 21,000 million in response to the coup to the aluminum and steel sector, which represents damage of about 26,000 million.
In the absence of determining the percentage of tariff that would apply, what community sources support is that the answer does not intend to be “dollar per dollar” and at the moment the services sector is left out, which is where the US is especially strong. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, threatened taxes to the ‘big tech’ if the commercial war is not fixed.
Pharmaceutical products are out
The list that the European Commission has prepared, and that in the next four weeks will be open to consultations of the affected sectors and the Member States before their validation, includes industrial products, such as airplanes, for a value of 12,000 million euros. “Boeing will be affected,” they recognize community sources that invite the company, direct rival of the European Airbus, to make “comments” during the consultation process. 10.3 billion will affect parts of the automotive sector, and 2,000 million will do it to cars. 12.9 billion are aimed at the chemical and plastic sector; 7,200, to electrical equipment; and 10,000 million, to personal care and makeup assets.
The agri -food sector, with a variety of products ranging from the food prepared to the fruit, will affect about 6,400 million euros, which in the case of alcóholic drinks will be about 1.3 billion. Brussels has returned to include the bourbon, the whiskey that has a special symbolic value in the US and that occurs in the state of Kentucky, of republican tradition. And it is that in the tariffs designed by the EU it is intended to “hit where it hurts”, that is, the Trump electorate and in a way that affects the European market as little as possible. However, the Bourbon was out of the first package of tariffs approved by the Member States to avoid reprisals in the European wine and champagne sector.
What has been outside the new proposal of the European Commission is the pharmaceutical sector. The argument of community technicians is that Trump at the moment has not punished these products and that the EU’s intention is to “preserve them.”
The EU will take the commercial war to the WTO
Brussels also have the litigation ready before the World Trade Organization, although it will not yet present it. “The EU will also initiate a litigation in the WTO against the US for its universal tariffs called” reciprocal “tariffs and tariffs on cars and car parts, formally presenting a request for consultations,” says the community government in a statement.
“The unequivocal opinion of the EU is that these tariffs flagrantly violate the fundamental rules of the WTO. The objective of the EU is, therefore, to reaffirm that the norms agreed internationally are important and cannot be unilaterally breached by any WTO member,” adds the note. In Trump’s previous mandate, the EU also resorted to that multilateral body and tariffs were suspended based on an agreement reached as part of that procedure.
The EU is therefore advancing in the preparation of the ‘Plan B’, which is the response to the commercial war unleashed by Donald Trump if the negotiations that are underway from the 90 -day truce granted by the community block after the paralysis for that same period announced by the US President for a part of the tariffs fail.
A negotiated solution is the EU ‘Plan A’, but since the conversations began the community government is asking the Trump administration. “We need the US to show a willingness to advance a fair solution,” said Commission Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, in a debate in the European Parliament on Tuesday.
Among the offers that the European Commission has sent to Washington to try to appease Trump are the “zero tariffs for zero” for industrial goods and vehicles as well as the commitment to increase imports by 50,000 million euros, which is the imbalance of the commercial balance in favor of the EU, through the purchase of gas or some agricultural products such as soybeans.
Source: www.eldiario.es
