EU could offer to buy $56 bln of US products to end trade war, top negotiator says
Summary
Trump has repeatedly lambasted the EU for what he says are the unfair surpluses they run in their trade in goods with the U.S.Europe can resolve its trade dispute with the U.S. by purchasing 50 billion euros’ worth of American goods like gas and soybeans, the EU’s top trade negotiator said.
The EU won’t accept a baseline 10% U.S. tariff on European imports as a long-term solution to the trade issue, commissioner Maros Sefcovic told the Financial Times in an interview published late Thursday. Instead, the bloc could look at addressing U.S. complaints by buying more U.S. goods as a means of flattening out the trade imbalance between the two economies, Sefcovic said. The commissioner said his team is making progress with his counterparts in Washington toward a deal.
Still, it will be difficult to reach a deal acceptable to all 27 members of the EU and its common parliament, the commissioner said.
President Trump has repeatedly lambasted the EU and other trade partners for what he says are the unfair surpluses they run in their trade in goods with the U.S. Stepping up purchases of American liquefied natural gas is one remedy that has repeatedly been floated by policymakers. Doing so could help narrow the gap in EU-U.S. trade, Sefcovic said.
“If what we are looking at as a problem in the deficit is 50 billion euros, I believe that we can really . . . solve this problem very quickly through LNG purchases, through some agricultural products like soybeans, or other areas," Sefcovic said. The EU runs a yearly surplus of more than $200 billion in its goods trade with the U.S., but a deficit in its services trade of more than $100 billion, according to figures from the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.
Trump at the start of April said he would impose a sweeping 20% tariff on goods from the EU and other trading partners, duties that he says are reciprocal. That package of tariffs was later paused for 90 days, though a 10% baseline remains in effect, as do sector-specific import duties on cars and some metals.
The EU in response to Trump’s tariffs set out its own package of tariffs on U.S. goods including soybeans, motorcycles and chewing gum, though certain key sectors were excluded from the duties. Brussels later also paused that package for a reciprocal 90 days.
Write to Joshua Kirby at joshua.kirby@wsj.com
topics
