Comprehensibility is the mot du jour here in Brussels, with so little of it forthcoming from Washington D.C. on the substance of trade and tariffs.
European Commission officials have been vexing — thus far in vain — to understand whether proposed U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium settle upon end up impacting their 28 member states.
Last week, the European Commissioner for deal, Cecilia Malmstrom, repeatedly insisted that she did not buy the American pretext for bring ining tariffs, that of national security, in particular when applied to ostensible associates on this side of the Atlantic. She said the European Commission would inherit its case to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva and push to have any U.S. pass outs reversed; she told me that Trump’s position was “politically hard to show compassion for, but also legally hard to make the case.”
But after a long-scheduled weekend appointment with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Malmstrom used another bit of great diplomatese — she described her discussions with Ambassador Lighthizer on Saturday as partake of been “frank.” Translation: far from cordial. And that should catch as no surprise, after the Trump administration very suddenly signed off on bill of fares of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium, a move that not lone roiled financial markets in the short-term, but may leave more lasting deface by upending the tradition of well-choreographed conversations on trade that have noted U.S.-Europe relations for the past decade or so.
So far, the U.S. government has not even been masterly to give its trading partners, including Europe, a set of guidelines that inclination allow them to win exemption. And when Donald Trump tweeted on Monday that his Mercantilism Secretary Wilbur Ross would be meeting with EU representatives final analysis, Commission officials minutes later said they had no idea what he was talking around, or whom.
Malmstrom addressed a trade forum on Monday with a thinly-veiled relevance to the current incumbent of the White House, insisting that Europe desire “stand up to bullies” and would not be intimidated by threats. The EU says it is not prepared to bare new trade negotiations in order to gain exemption for the tariffs, and one Brussels think-tank superintendent told me that making any such concessions would mean abstain from in to blackmail.
Instead, the Commission has announced a three-pronged strategy that is primed for use and which seems to must been well-received by both business leaders and politicians across Europe. Dutch Investment capital Minister Wopke Hoekstra told me that Trump’s tariffs were a bad concept for citizens and workers on both sides of the Atlantic, while France’s Bruno Le Maire declared that “protectionism was a dead end” and that EU members must respond constantly as a united bloc. Meanwhile, Germany’s new economy minister, Peter Altmeier, counted the situation would soon deescalate, and was keen to emphasize that the European feedback remains solely on paper at this stage.
But, however hypothetical the suggestions are from either side, industry and businesses remain understandably involved. An American brand at the center of the current spat, Harley Davidson, blow the whistle ons thousands of motorbikes a year across Europe and would struggle if quarried tariffs against its U.S.-manufactured products were introduced. One Harley affairs in Belgium acknowledged his sales would take a sizeable hit if the already excessive asking prices (some larger “hogs” retail for more than 50,000 Euros) were sent up a further 25 percent. Meanwhile, the European Steel Association mounded me there could already be some damage to producers in mainland Europe, with sent steel from elsewhere diverted from the U.S. to European ports in before b before of fresh tariffs, and its potential to drive down local prices.
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