Monday 17th May 2021
Don’t burden negotiations
EU suspends punitive tariffs on US goods for the time being
In 2018, the trade dispute between the US and the EU culminated in mutual punitive tariffs. For Europe there are surcharges on steel and aluminum, for the USA on jeans and motorcycles, for example. The EU Commission now wants to suspend its tariffs and hopes for a more level-headed discussion partner.
For the time being, the EU is not taking any further countermeasures because of the punitive tariffs imposed by the USA in 2018 on steel and aluminum from Europe. The counter-tariffs planned from June 1 would be “temporarily suspended”, said a spokeswoman for the EU Commission. The EU and USA announced in a joint statement that they would start talks on global overcapacities in steel and aluminum. They should be completed by the end of the year.
Trade relations between the EU and the USA had deteriorated massively under the former US President Donald Trump. Trump accused the EU of unfair competition and regularly criticized the EU’s high export surpluses in mutual trade.
EU levied tariffs of 2.8 billion euros
In June 2018 he imposed punitive tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum from Europe. The EU responded with counter tariffs on US goods worth 2.8 billion euros. Affected products included whiskey, jeans, orange juice and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
However, this only covered part of the value of the punitive tariffs imposed by the USA. At the time, the EU announced that it would decide on further tariffs within three years if there was no solution by then. It has now suspended this step in order not to burden the negotiations with the USA on excess capacities, which, if successful, could possibly lead to a lifting of Washington’s punitive tariffs.
The new US administration under President Joe Biden has now taken a more conciliatory course. In a first signal of relaxation, a few weeks after Biden took office at the beginning of March, both sides suspended punitive tariffs in the dispute over subsidies for the aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing.
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