Following the unilateral raising on 23 March of US customs duties on imports of steel and aluminium, from which the EU is provisionally exempt until 1 May, the European Commission reiterated on Monday 26 March that it is ready to discuss points of trade friction with US President Donald Trump's administration, but it repeated that it expects permanent exemption from US taxes on steel and aluminium for the whole EU bloc.
"There were already some high-level contacts last week where both sides agreed to carry on these meetings to try to address this issue and other issues of common interest. Now we are entering into the stage where we will find a way of making these working methods operational and see how to take it further, bearing in mind that the first (...) issue at hand is steel overcapacity. The EU and the US share common interests in addressing this issue", Commission spokesperson Daniel Rosario stated.
"Let’s see how the agreement reached last week (between European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross – (see EUROPE 11986) will be followed up upon in the coming days", Rosario added.
"We expect this exemption (from the US taxes) to be permanent. If one of our trade partners has any issues to discuss with us, we are more than willing to do so", he said.
As part of the discussion process that was initiated by his administration on 19 March regarding certain countries' requests for an exemption from these measures, Trump decided at the last minute on Thursday 22 March to make the EU exempt until 1 May – along with Australia, Argentina, Brazil and South Korea, in addition to Canada and Mexico – from the tariffs of 25% on imports of steel and of 10% on imports of aluminium into the USA. The tariffs are motivated on the grounds of national security under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act (see EUROPE 11988).
While he was pleased that "the US recognises the EU is an indivisible entity", European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker considered on Friday 23 March that the time given to the EU by Trump for discussions with the US administration was "unrealistic", given the breadth of the issues to be settled.
"You don't talk about anything, in principle, when it's with a gun to your head", France's President Emmanuel Macron stated at the European Council on Friday.
Several European leaders said at the Council that they would like talks with the US with a view to a 'TTIP light' that would just include managing tariff barriers.
€120 billion surplus for EU in 2017. The USA and China remained by far the EU's biggest trading partners in 2017, according to the latest figures published by the European statistical office, Eurostat. Bilateral trade between the EU and USA stood at €631 billion, or 16.9% of the total EU trade in goods. The EU recorded a surplus of €120 billion with its US partner. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)