(Bloomberg) — The European Union is continuing intensive trade talks with the US ahead of a July 9 tariff deadline set by President Donald Trump and is “making progress,” according to EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.
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“Our preference is to find a mutually acceptable solution and in a sense to park those trade tensions,” he told a news conference after a meeting of euro-area finance ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.
Still, he warned that the EU is “ready to take measures to protect our economic interests and our businesses should we not be able to find this solution.”
Asked whether the EU is resigned to Trump maintaining a 10% baseline tariff, he said “so-called reciprocal tariffs” were “speculative assumptions which are not reflecting the current state of negotiations.”
The EU faces the threat of 50% levies on nearly all its exports to the US when a deadline set by Trump expires on July 9. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said a trade deal with the EU is likely to be among the last the US completes.
The EU has approved tariffs on €21 billion ($24.1 billion) of US goods in response to Trump’s metals levies that can be quickly implemented. They target politically sensitive American states and include products such as soybeans from Louisiana, home to House Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as agricultural products, poultry and motorcycles.
The bloc is also preparing an additional list of tariffs on €95 billion of American products in response to Trump’s so-called reciprocal levies and automotive duties. They would target industrial goods including Boeing Co. aircraft, US-made cars and bourbon.
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