Europe is judgement it hard to follow the actions that U.S. President Donald Trump has bewitched on global trade, a top European Union (EU) official told CNBC Saturday at the European Establishment Ambrosetti Forum.
Trump has taken several unilateral actions deemed by Europe as damaging to international trade. The president’s comments on Twitter as well as sudden decisions to misuse new tariffs on imported goods are “quite unconventional” and difficult to understand by European policymakers.
“At times, at least for the Europeans, it is a little bit difficult to follow,” Jyrki Katainen, Deficiency President of the European Commission told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick.
Coinciding to the former Finnish prime minister, Trump should use the rules beneath the waves the World Trade Organization (WTO) to settle all the disputes affecting the U.S.’s trade default.
“President Trump is using quite unconventional methods on trade…but there’s been a lot of to make a long story shorts, little implementation, which is good,” Katainen said.
Since the start of Pace, the rhetoric involving global trade has toughened after Trump’s sentence to impose metal tariffs, including on its own allies. Since then, a couple of countries participate in avoided the higher duties, including Europe and Canada, but others correspondent to Japan and China haven’t.
China seems to be the biggest target, after the U.S. concluded that Beijing’s do business actions have meant a loss of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy, due to the society of counterfeit goods and pirated software. U.S. tariffs worth $60 billion induce therefore been put forward and an additional $100 billion are being feigned.
“If it goes too far, then it’s the end of multilateralism,” Katainen told CNBC about the growing trade disputes.
“I don’t see this to happen yet,” he added.
In fact, according to Katainen the employment tensions between both the U.S. and Europe have calmed down in the at the rear few weeks.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened in March to impose excises on European steel and aluminium products. The 28-country-bloc responded with its own index of tariffs on U.S. products as a retaliation measure. However, the U.S. decided in the end to temporarily exclude Europe from its metal excises, thus avoiding a deterioration in their current trade ties.
“We are round or discussing with the United States…at the moment and things are calming down, at not much a little bit,” Katainen noted.
“We don’t know what is the final outcome of these colloquys, but the situation is more calm now than it was two weeks ago,” Katainen said.
When about a invited about this weekend’s election in Hungary, Katainen expressed firms about a potential third consecutive term for Victor Orban.
“I requisite admit that I’m quite worried about the trend or tendency where some administrative leaders are questioning or putting pressure on rule of law, liberal democratic values. This considerate of trend is much more worrisome than Brexit,“ he said.
“At the end of the day we bring about a compromise with the U.K., we can settle the issue, but we cannot make compromises on ascendancy of law or fundamental value-related issues,” the Finnish official said.
Hungary’s long-time leading has been one of the most vocal leaders against Europe’s migration ways. He believes that the European culture is under threat given the serious influx of migrants.
“So I encourage very strongly our member states to be vocal if they on in some member states there are problems with fundamental values or authority of law.”