The European Commission will activate existing countermeasures against the United States that were suspended in 2018 and 2020 from April 1. The measures are aimed at a range of US products such as motorcycles, bourbons and boats and are in response to economic damage worth €8 billion from EU steel and aluminum exports.
In response to the new US tariffs affecting more than 18 billion euros of exports from the EU, the EC announced a package of new countermeasures for US exports, which will enter into force in mid-April, after consultations with member states and other interested parties. In total, the countermeasures that could be applied to the export of goods from the US reach a value of 26 billion euros, which corresponds to the economic volume of the US tariffs.
“The countermeasures we are taking today are strong, but proportionate. Since the US applies tariffs worth $28 billion, we are responding with countermeasures worth €26 billion. It corresponds to the economic volume of US tariffs”, said the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. She added that the EU remains open to negotiations.
“We firmly believe that in a world full of geopolitical and economic uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with customs duties. We are ready to engage in meaningful dialogue”, she said, adding that she had tasked Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič to continue talks with the American side.
In June 2018, the first US administration under President Trump introduced tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports worth 6.4 billion euros, in January 2020 additional tariffs followed, affecting around 40 million euros of exports of certain steel and aluminum products. In response, in June 2018, the EU introduced its own countermeasures on €2.8 billion worth of US exports to the EU, and a similar response followed the new 2020 tariffs.
The remaining countermeasures, which affect exports worth up to 3.6 billion euros, were supposed to enter into force on June 1, 2021. However, after discussions with the American side on the introduction of tariff quotas for EU exporters, the EU suspended those measures until March 31, 2025, in order to give the parties space to find a longer-term solution.
“We could go one step further”
French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad said on Wednesday that the European Union could go a step further in its response to US tariffs even though a trade war is in nobody’s interest. US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports took effect on Wednesday as part of his campaign to shift world trade in favor of the United States, prompting a swift response from Europe.
The European Commission said it will introduce countermeasures on 26 billion euros worth of American goods starting next month. The commission said it would end the current suspension of tariffs on US products from April 1 and introduce a new package of countermeasures on US goods by mid-April.
“We have a package of measures against American sectors, we also have the means to go further with other types of services. For example, if they were to go further, to include digital services or even intellectual property,” Haddad explained.
In a statement to TF1, Haddad left the taxation of American technology giants such as Netflix, Google or Facebook open, in the context of the trade war raging between the United States and the EU, reports BFM TV.
The French ministry declined to provide further details but stressed that these services are already regulated by Europe’s Digital Services Act DSA, which applies to digital platforms ranging widely from online sales services such as Alibaba to social networks such as Tiktok, according to BFM TV.