US Trade War: EU to retaliate if talk over car tariffs fails
The Viral G7 picture with the leaders/Image: Twitter/Angela Merkel
The United States is in the midst of another controversy, this time in the form of car tariffs. President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he was planning on increasing tariffs on car sales and that he was “willing to slap extra tariffs on US$500 billion in Chinese products imported to the United States”. “I’m ready to go to 500,” Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen, which suggested that every Chinese product would be subject to these duties.
Washington imposed tariffs on US$34 billion of Chinese products on July 6 and last week threatened to slap 10 percent duties on another US$200 billion worth of the goods. Mr Trump also said, quote, “I’m not doing this for politics, I’m doing this to do the right thing for our country. We have been ripped off by China for a long time.” The European Union or EU, in response to this, has arranged a meeting with Mr Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on 25th July where Mr Juncker will offer to discuss a plurilateral deal which would reduce levies on cars and car parts among all major auto-exporting countries.
EU trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom said: “The aim of President Juncker’s visit is to try to establish a good relation, try to see how we can de-escalate the situation and avoid it from going further and see if there is a forum where we can discuss these issues.” But if this deal falls through, the EU will be prepared to retaliate. She added, “If the US would impose these car tariffs that would be very unfortunate but we are preparing together with our member states a list of rebalancing measures as well.”
The US has already been here before, with duties on its steel and aluminium exports costing the EU a further of £2.54 billion on tariffs of American goods.
Source: SCMP, Express.uk
*Neha Hardikar is a Research Intern at The Kootneeti
