On Wednesday 28 January, the US Ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, called on MEPs to press ahead with negotiations on the EU-US trade agreement. Although US President Donald Trump has backtracked on his threats of additional tariffs, MEPs have not yet reversed their decision to halt the negotiations (see EUROPE 13792/24).
Explaining that, since his arrival, his main goal has been to finalise the trade agreement, get it approved by the EU and get the planned measures implemented, the ambassador said that he hoped to see progress on this “in the coming weeks”.
“I think it will be a huge advancement in the relationship if we can get this trade agreement confirmed. We can get the mandate out of the Parliament”, he said to the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, pointing out that the EU Council had adopted its position. Once the European Parliament’s mandate has been obtained, “the European Commissioner for Trade, Maroš Šefčovič, the US Trade Representative, Jamieson Geer, and the US Secretary of Commerce, Howard Letnick, can get to work on trying to come up with a more particular agreement”, explained Mr Puzder.
Asked about the United States’ compliance with its trade commitments, the ambassador said that his country was already “abiding by our commitments” since the agreement was signed.
According to Mr Puzder, it is in the interests of the United States for the EU to be economically prosperous. In his view, it is therefore essential for Europe to be a major player in the “AI economy”, claiming that, “very soon”, “AI will dominate the economy”. Quoting Elon Musk – who claims that, by the end of the year, AI will be as intelligent as a human and, in a few years’ time, as intelligent as all of humanity combined – the ambassador explained that it was important for the West, “which includes the United States and Europe and the European Union”, to be the first to reach these levels of intelligence. This requires five essential things: energy, critical minerals (rare earths), data centres, data and sophisticated software.
On this subject, the ambassador called for updated legislation on AI, regretting that European legislation had been adopted “before Chat GPT”. “We need to have an AI Act that actually addresses the issues that we’re facing now”, he explained. “To the extent that we need to regulate AI, this is something that the US, UK and EU should work together on. I believe we’re already working with the UK, and I’d like to see us work with the EU on this as well”, he stressed.
Mr Puzder also called for an agreement on rare earths, stating that this would “show that there’s real unity between the United States and the European Union going forward". He added that he hoped for progress on the 4th of February, at a conference on critical minerals to be held in Washington. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)