Brussels leaves timeline for EU’s tariff retaliation open, rejecting French comments

The European Commission has dismissed France’s claim that the EU would respond to Donald Trump’s imminent “reciprocal tariffs” by the end of April, preferring to leave the timeline for any possible response open as it issued a final plea for Washington to avoid the “inevitable pain” of additional US import duties.

Brussels’ criticism came after a French government spokesperson said the Commission, which oversees the bloc’s trade policy, would retaliate against Trump’s anticipated duties “before the end of April”.

“France doesn’t speak on behalf of the European Union when it comes to trade policy,” European Commission spokesperson Olof Gill told reporters on Wednesday, just hours before the new tariffs were set to be announced. “We do.”

Gill, however, confirmed that the Commission’s retaliation against the recent raft of US protectionism measures would come in two separate stages, as the French government had asserted.

Brussels’ response to last month’s 25% tariff on steel and aluminium imports into the US will come into force on April 13. Its response to the so-called reciprocal duties, which aim to match the taxes levied by other countries on US goods, will be combined with its response to the recent 25% US levy on automobiles, Gill said.

“There will be a first response to the steel and aluminium tariffs from the US, and there will be a second response that kind of clusters together everything else,” Gill said.

He did not give a date for the second response.

The Commission had initially pledged to respond to the steel and aluminium duties in two stages, with the first wave of retaliatory duties set to take effect on April 1 and the second on April 13.

The two sets of measures were subsequently aligned to come into effect on April 13 after Trump threatened to impose 200% duties on EU-produced wine and spirits if the Commission went ahead with its original plan to impose duties on US-made whiskey on 1 April.

The US auto tariffs, announced last week, are set to enter into force on Thursday.

Gill also emphasised that the Commission’s “priority” is to reach a negotiated deal with Washington to reduce both the existing duties and avoid further tariffs.

“We want to sit down at the table with our American counterparts and find agreements, deals that will allow us to avoid the inevitable pain of these tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic,” Gill said.

Trump’s new tariffs are likely to inflict significant harm on export-dependent EU member states such as Germany, Denmark, and Ireland. Deutsche Bank estimated on Wednesday that Trump’s reciprocal duties could reduce the EU’s overall GDP by between 0.3% and 0.6%.

A White House spokesperson said on Tuesday that the reciprocal tariffs will “be effective immediately” once Trump announces the measures at a White House garden event scheduled for later on Wednesday.

[BTS]