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The European Union on Thursday announced the delay of its first counter-measures against the United States over President Donald Trump’s metals tariffs until mid-April.
European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic made the announcement at a hearing at the European Parliament on Thursday.
Sefcovic said this was to allow it to re-think which US goods to hit and offer extra weeks for negotiations.
It would be recalled that the European Commission had proposed re-imposing 2018 tariffs on 4.5 billion euros ($4.9 billion) of US products on April 1, followed by hitting a further 18 billion euros of US goods on April 13.
“We are now considering to align the timing of the two sets of EU counter-measures so we can consult with member states on both lists simultaneously, and this would also give us extra time for negotiations with our American partners,” Sefcovic said.
The commission subsequently confirmed all EU counter-measures would take effect in mid-April.
It was gathered that the first set of counter-measures includes applying a 50% tariff on US bourbon.
Trump threatened to slap a 200% tariff on all wines and other alcoholic products coming from the EU if the bloc went ahead with this.
The Trump administration is also considering reciprocal tariffs on April 2 to rebalance the global trading system.
Sefcovic indicated that he had made limited headway with US counterparts in talks so far, such as on his proposal to discuss on lowering import duties on industrial goods.
“I don’t think that the U.S. thinking is in that direction. And currently they believe that the best way to do this is through the tariff policy. I hope that one day we will get to this discussion, but currently we are clearly not there,” he added.
French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said on Sunday that the EU was probably mistaken in targeting American whiskey, while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni cautioned EU partners on Tuesday against escalating the trade dispute with the United States.
“I am not certain that responding to tariffs with more tariffs is necessarily a good deal,” Meloni said.
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English (US) ·