EU hits back at Trump tariffs and warns against trade war

In Brussels, it was just after 6:00 am on Wednesday. But it was midnight in Washington DC when the 25% prices of President Donald Trump on steel and aluminum entered into force on the main American trade partners.

It took less than 10 minutes for the European Union to answer.

“Prices are taxes. They are bad for business, and worse for consumers,” said the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

EU initial countermeasures will take effect on American products on April 1, Ranging from jeans and motorcycles to peanut butter and bourbonJust as they were with the first prices of the Trump administration in 2018 and 2020.

But there will be more to come in mid-April. A whole band of textiles, household appliances, food and agricultural products could be included, according to a two -week consultation with stakeholders.

A list of articles of nearly 100 pages is under traffic that presents meat, dairy products, fruit, wine and spirits, toilet seats, wood, coats, swimwear, night clothes, shoes, chandeliers and mowers.

For consumers, higher prices are looming on the shelves of European supermarkets, especially for American products. But for companies and certain industries, in particular steel, there is a real danger.

The head of the German BGA Federation of BGG, trade and external service, Dirk Jandura, warned that the Germans may have to dig more deeply in their pockets to pay American products in supermarkets.

Orange juice, bourbon and peanut butter were the most likely products to strike. “Trade margins are so weak that this cannot be absorbed by companies,” he said.

In total, the EU will target 26 billion euros (22 billion pounds sterling) of American exports.

“We are not going to enter into hypotheses other than saying that we have prepared all these results assiduously,” said EU spokesperson Olof Gill.

António Costa, the president of the EU council, called on the United States to defuse, although there was little sign of this on Wednesday, when Trump promised to retaliate to the offsuments of the EU.

“We have been mistreated for a long time and we will no longer be mistreated,” he said.

In Austria too, there were concerns about climbing.

“The United States is the second most important export market for Austrian products after Germany – and the most important for Germany,” said Christoph Neumayer, head of the Austrian industry federation. It was “essential that Europe acts together and decisively,” he added.

An EU official pointed out that products such as soybeans and orange juice could easily come from Brazil or Argentina, so consumers are not too hard.

And there was a suggestion that some of the targeted American exports also came from American states under republican control: the soy of Louisiana or meat from Nebraska and Kansas.

A relatively large number of American exports enter the EU via the Dutch port in Rotterdam or Antwerp in Belgium.

The Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs, Dirk Beljaarts, said that no one should benefit from a “tariff war”, but he hoped that this would not hit the economy of his own country too much: “This has an impact on businesses and consumers – in particular consumers in the United States.”

An area that will be particularly struck on both sides of the Atlantic is in the drinks sector.

Pauline Bastidon of Spirits Europe said that the producers of the EU and the United States were united, with risks facing European companies that produced American and American spirits that have been strongly invested in Europe.

Chris Swonger, from US Distille Spirittes Council, said that in the three years that followed the suspension of the previous 25% price of the EU on American whiskey, the American distiller had “worked hard to regain solid bases on our largest export market”.

The reprint of the prices of April 1 was “deeply disappointing” and He called for a return to “zero for zero” prices.

For cognac producers in France, the prospect of an American import tax of 25% is also a major problem because most of their products are intended for export, to the United States or China.

French producers have already been affected by Chinese measures who slapped the strong taxes on cognac.

“Morale is in discharges,” said Bastien Brusaferro to the General Wine-Growers.

Thousands of jobs are at stake in the region of the Charity region, he says: “Cognac is a product designed for export.”

There was also a disastrous warning of the head of the European Steel Association, Henrik Adam.

“The” America First “policy of President Trump threatens to be a last nail in the coffin of the European steel industry,” he warned.

Trump’s initial prices on European steel in 2018 saw EU steel exports to the United States over a million tonnes, and for three tonnes of steel that did not enter the United States, two thirds entered the EU instead.

“These new measures imposed by Trump are more extensive, so the impact of American prices is probably much larger.”