The European Commissioner for Trade, Maroš Šefčovič, explained in Washington on Thursday 20 February that reciprocity in customs tariffs should benefit both the EU and the United States, following talks with the US Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, Jamieson Greer, who has been appointed US Trade Representative, and the Director of the National Economic Council (NEC), Kevin Hassett.
This “reciprocity must be mutually beneficial”, the Commissioner stressed at a press conference.
While US President Donald Trump announced that the Europeans had agreed to lower their tariffs on cars, Šefčovič denied this decrease, although he indicated that the EU was willing to discuss it, if the US were open to lowering the tariffs applied to pick-ups and trucks, which are between 20% and 25%.
According to the Commissioner, the Americans are “very open to discussion on anything to do with reducing customs duties”. “We are ready to commit”, he promised, saying he was ready “to look at how we can reduce import duties for all industrial products”.
Mr Šefčovič also urged the US President “not to target each other” on steel and aluminium, saying that the focus should instead be on China’s production overcapacity of “more than 600 million tonnes”.
While Donald Trump denounced the imbalance in the trade balance in favour of the EU, the Commissioner pointed out that while the Union had “a surplus of around $150 billion on goods”, the United States had “a fairly significant surplus, of over $100 billion, on services”. “We’re talking about a €50 billion (US) deficit in our trade relations, out of a total of $1.6 trillion; I don’t think that’s something we can’t overcome”, he added.
Recalling that transatlantic trade accounted for more than 30% of world trade, Maroš Šefčovič warned that if Europeans and Americans were unable to reach an agreement, it would have “a huge impact and negative effects on the entire global economy”. “We are concentrating on finding a positive outcome” to the emerging trade tensions, he explained. The Commissioner therefore felt that it was simply necessary to “continue to discuss, to take advantage of the momentum (generated by his talks in Washington, editor’s note), and to focus on the positive agenda, not on measures and counter-measures”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)