European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and United States Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross will hold further talks this week as part of the discussion process between the Commission and the US Administration on transatlantic trade, a process begun in March in the wake of the United States’ unilateral raising at the end of March of customs duties on imported steel and aluminium.
At a hearing before the US Senate on Thursday 10 May, Ross said that he would resume talks with Malmström “at the start of the week”. “Discussions are continuing”, a European source repeated on Monday 14 May, without giving any further details.
At the end of April, US President Donald Trump decided to extend the temporary exemption from US import tariffs of 25% for steel and 10% for aluminium granted the EU by one month, to 1 June.
The Commission maintains that it is demanding permanent and unconditional exemption from the US taxes for the EU before it discusses other contentious bilateral trade issues.
“There won’t be a trade war [between the United States and Europe]. That impression is wrong”, new US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell said on Saturday 12 May, giving assurances that the US was talking to its “friends to solve the problem”.
“The president says: We want free and fair trade. As long as others work with tariffs, we will do the same … We simply want a level playing field”, Grenell said, stating that Washington was still “waiting” for the Europeans to present a plan.
Malmström warned at the end of April that the Commission could not negotiate tariff reductions or other market access issues without a mandate from the 28 EU member states (see EUROPE 12004).
With France clearly reflecting the Commission’s stance, Germany and Italy are not concealing their desire for a broad agreement that would include tariff reductions for certain products and set to one side the most delicate issues in the TTIP negotiations that have been in the doldrums since the end of 2016 (see EUROPE 12015).
EU heads of state and/or government will discuss this matter at their meeting ahead of the EU-Balkans summit in Sofia on 17 May.
Several stressed at the European Council of 23 March that they did not want talks on a “TTIP-lite” trade agreement which dealt only with tariff barriers (see EUROPE 11989). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)