The European Union on Wednesday announced retaliatory trade action with a series of duties on US industrial and agricultural products that will go into effect from 1 April, responding to the Trump administration increase in tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to 25 percent.
The EU measures will cover goods from the United States worth some €26 billion, and apart from steel and aluminum products, will include textiles, home appliances and agricultural goods. Motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter and jeans will also be hit.
The European Commission, which manages trade- and commercial coflicts for the bloc, said in a statement on Wednesday that the EU steps are a 'carefully calibrated' response to Washington's tariffs and that they will take place in two stages.
On 1 April, the Commission will re-instate tariffs that were put in place during the first Trump administration between 2018 and 2020. These countermeasures target "a range of US products" that respond to "economic harm done on €8 billion of EU steel and aluminium exports."
In response to new US tariffs affecting more than €18 billion of EU exports, the Commission will then put forward a new package countermeasures on US exports, to come into force "by mid-April."
'Open to negotiation'
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU “will always remain open to negotiation.”
“We firmly believe that in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with tariffs,” von der Leyen said.
Meanwhile, the UK said it would not impose retaliatory measures of its own on the United States, but London called Washington's decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports “disappointing.”
Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that tariffs on Australian steel and aluminum were "unjustified," but that his government would not retaliate with its own tariffs.
And Japan said it was “regrettable“ that the country had not been granted an exemption from the US tariffs.
Japan government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi warned that "widespread measures to limit trade risk having a significant impact on the Japan-US economic relationship as well as the world economy and multilateral trade system.“
(With newswires)
