EU caution as Trump backs off trade war
CRUNCH talks between the US and EU have done little to quell concerns about the future of the Trump administration’s trade policy, experts have warned.
An agreement by Donald Trump, the US president, to hold off from tariffs on EU cars and start fresh negotiations on trade barriers was a “major concession”, Jean-claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said on Wednesday.
There was relief in Germany following mounting fears that its car industry would be hard hit by the Trump administration’s mooted 25pc tariff on $200bn worth of automobile imports.
Peter Altmaier, Germany’s conservative economy minister, said the “breakthrough” could avoid a trade war and “save millions of jobs”.
However, Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, sounded a much more cautious note yesterday, warning that “any trade deal must be based on reciprocity”.
Amid meetings between Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and farming unions, Mr Le Maire said that agriculture ought to remain outside of any US-EU trade negotiation. To do otherwise would risk food safety and environmental standards, he added.
Mr Le Maire also reiterated the need to remove a long-running blockage to a trade agreement with the US: that of access to public procurement markets in America.
Trade experts questioned how meaningful the outcome of talks had actually been, as steel and aluminium tariffs remained in place, and the threat of auto tariffs was merely stayed rather than removed.