On the evening of Monday, 7 April, the European Commission sent Member States its final list of tariffs on American products as part of its response to the tariffs that the United States has imposed on steel and aluminium imports from the European Union (see EUROPE 13577/1). This response is expected to made official on Tuesday, 15 April, if the EU27 agree to the proposal on Wednesday, 9 April, but the tariffs will be applied in three phases.
An initial wave of tariffs is expected to come into force as early as 15 April (Annex I). These are tariffs that the EU adopted back in 2018 and that already responded to measures taken by US President Donald Trump.
Nevertheless, the European Commission has proposed that whisky and bourbon be removed from the list of products targeted by tariffs, according to a draft regulation sent to Member States, a copy of which Agence Europe has received. France and Italy are notably putting pressure on the European Commission so that it will remove these two products from the list—fearing that Donald Trump will follow through with his threat to impose a 200% tariff on European alcohol.
The second wave of tariffs (Annex II) is expected to be applied on 16 May, and lastly, a third wave (Annexes III and IV) will not take effect until 1 December.
Among all the tariffs are found numerous agricultural products (soya, poultry, rice, maize) as well as industrial products (motorcycles, electrical equipment, lumber, plastics, etc.). Although the European Commission’s ambition was initially to come close to the €26 billion in tariffs imposed by Donald Trump, the volume has been revised downwards.
In Luxembourg on Monday, 7 April, European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič explained that it would be too high a price for EU businesses to pay (see EUROPE 13616/1). “I can tell you that it will not be up to the level of €26 billion because we’ve been listening very carefully to our Member States. We wanted to make sure that the burden is spread fairly among all Member States. And, as I said, we are not in the business of tit for tat or penny for penny. We do this because we are forced to [...], and we still hope that, in the end, we will [come] to [a] fruitful, mutually advantageous trading relationship”, he stated.
The next part of the response. The EU wanted to give itself more time to decide how it would respond to the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. It is a matter of not only establishing a calibrated response but also observing the initial effects of Donald Trump’s measures in the United States.
According to European Commission Spokesperson for Trade Olof Gill, the European Commission could, however, present a response plan as soon as the beginning of next week. This will be followed by Member States undertaking a full consultation and decision-making procedure.
The ‘everything is on the table’ political line persists, but the possibility of targeting US services as well as products is looking increasingly plausible. As Maroš Šefčovič pointed out, the capacity to tax imports of goods is starting to be limited.
See the European Commission’s proposed regulation and its annexes, respectively: https://aeur.eu/f/gc4 and https://aeur.eu/f/gc5 (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)