EU joins global battle against Trump tariff onslaught

WHISTLER, Canada: The EU on Friday (Saturday in Manila) launched its first counteroffensive against Washington’s punishing steel and aluminum tariffs while the US began meetings in Canada with outraged finance ministers from its top trading partners.

Meanwhile in Washington, US President Donald Trump floated the possibility of scrapping the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement in favor of separate bilateral deals with Canada and Mexico.

And in another leg of Trump’s multi-front trade offensive, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross arrived in Beijing to continue fraught talks with Chinese officials. Trump has vowed to press ahead with tariffs on as much as $50 billion in imports from China.

Brussels and Ottawa on Friday filed legal challenges at the World Trade Organization against Washington’s decision. The EU, Canada and Mexico also threatened stiff retaliatory tariffs as they pushed back against Trump’s moves.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday he was dumbfounded by Washington’s national security basis for the tariffs, given that US and Canadian troops had fought together in World War II, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“This is insulting to them,” he told NBC News.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said she was “deeply disappointed” and reiterated a call for Britain and the EU to be “permanently exempted” from the “unjustified” metals tariffs.

At the Group of Seven ministerial meeting in Canada, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin faced stern reactions from his counterparts, who accused Trump of jeopardizing the world economy with steps that would prove job killers for all concerned. “The French, British and Germans held firm,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters.

“Everyone expressed their complete incomprehension of the American decisions and everyone said it was up to the Americans to take the next step since they were the ones who imposed the tariffs.”

Le Maire had earlier Friday referred to the talks as a “G6 plus one,” with the United States standing apart, adopting a joke circulating among attendees at the weekend.

Talk of trade did not completely drown out the meeting’s agenda, which included tax evasion and crypto- currencies, but the meeting’s chair, Canada’s Finance Minister Bill Morneau, allowed participants to register grievances with Mnuchin one at a time, according to a Canadian source.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told reporters he had let Mnuchin know the tariffs were “unacceptable.”

The US imposed the tariffs in March, but gave Canada and the EU -- the biggest sources of foreign aluminum and steel for the US -- a grace period that ended at midnight Thursday.