European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström met US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Monday 10 September.
This first meeting of the executive working group that was set up at the last Trump-Juncker meeting in New York in July (see EUROPE 12071) mainly enabled the parties to find their bearings and decide on the date of a new meeting in September.
The aim of the group is to identify the short term measures to facilitate trade and to assess existing tariff measures. The two parties have now defined the outlines of a limited trade agreement, confined to industrial sectors (except cars).
"We discussed how to move forward and identify priorities on both sides, and how to achieve concrete results in the short to medium term. Lots of work remains this autumn, our services will be in close contact in the coming weeks", Malmström tweeted.
There was insistence among Malmström's entourage on Monday that neither the agricultural nor automobile sector are part of the negotiations.
On the US side, Lighthizer described the meeting as "constructive". The US Trade Department said on its website that they hoped for an early harvest in the area of technical barriers to trade.
On Friday 7 September, Larry Kudlow, the director of the US National Economic Council and one of US President Donald Trump's main economic advisers, said on television channel CNBC that he was "very optimistic" about the EU-US discussions. "There are a number of transactions on the list, of things like soybeans, like LNG, like beef, maybe things like military sales", he said.
The discussions at political level will pick up again quickly. Malmström will meet her US counterpart again at the end of September – a meeting that will be followed by another at technical level in October. They are then expected to meet again in November to discuss closing the negotiations in certain areas.
The two parties stated they wanted to seal an agreement in 120 days – a challenge when these negotiations are far from being approved unanimously on the EU side. Many MEPs have criticised, among themselves, the US strategy of bringing "a gun to the head" of its trade partners at the negotiating table (see EUROPE 12085).
On Thursday, France's President Emmanuel Macron spoke of his "extremely strong" resolve on the issue of the climate after the controversy raised as part of the CETA agreement with Canada. "We should not have trade negotiations with countries that do not respect the Paris Agreement... When some say 'we are going to set off towards the big agreements with the US' which at the same time says 'we do not respect the Paris Agreement'. No, no!", he said at a citizens' consultation on the European Union.
The Trump administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy in its trade relations, negotiating new tariff arrangements by force in the hopes of rebalancing the US trade balance.
But China, in particular, refuses to bow to US demands. The trade war between the two economic powers does not seem close to being calmed. Strong in his recent Mexican success, Trump promised last week to take out sanctions on Chinese imports with new tariffs coming close to €230 billion. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)