US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, warned Europeans once again on Friday 7 December against possible additional measures if EU-US trade relations were not rebalanced (see EUROPE 12119).
“At some point and that point is coming up sooner rather than later the United States will do what it has to do to rebalance the trade relationship voluntarily or involuntarily”, he told a trio of journalists, including EUROPE. The ambassador estimated the US deficit with the EU at 150 billion dollars.
While Europeans and Americans are negotiating on trade issues and discussions between US negotiator Robert Lighthizer and Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström are ongoing, so far they have not yielded “any positive results", according to Sondland. “There was no substantive trade progress made”, he added. The Commission, for its part, has recently highlighted some progress (see EUROPE 12137).
"President [American Donald Trump] is well aware of the lack of progress and is losing patience. We will use the means of our choice. And at the time of our choice”, the ambassador explained. "If the president were to go into an economic battle with the EU, the trade deficit would likely be fixed very quickly. He's trying to avoid that for obvious reasons, but his hand is forced. He has all options on the table”, he stressed.
According to the American representative, however, the situation is easy to resolve. All that is “required [is] a little bit of collegiality. Congeniality and flexibility, to date, the European Union has shown me none of those three”, he regretted.
Thus, the ambassador called on the EU to act on its non-tariff barriers, recalling that the United States, since the end of the Second World War, had provided financial assistance to Europe. “So we're entitled to a little bit of consideration when we asked that some of these non tariff barriers, uh, some of these subsidies [...] that exist, designed exclusively to exclude the United States companies from Europe be either relaxed or eliminated so that some of that trade deficit can begin to recede”, he explained. “As of today, we haven't heard any serious response from the EU that indicates that that would be forthcoming”, he added.
Mr Sondland also called for greater regulatory convergence between Americans and Europeans. “Our standards are the highest in the world [...] and the European Union clearly needs to acknowledge that if they want to treat us the same way, they would treat a smaller third world country and put us all in the same box. we're going to have a very, very difficult time resolving these things”, he warned.
The EU must also put an end to “regulatory proliferation”, according to the US representative. “The higher the pile of regulations, the tougher the trade talks will be”, he said.
"The EU is very transactional and the areas in which there is cooperation is clearly in their interest to cooperate. It's not in their interest to fix a trade imbalance [...] It's certainly in their interest to cooperate on security matters because we have been instrumental in working with our European partners to prevent all kinds of tragedies that may have occurred”, he added. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant with Hermine Donceel)