A preliminary deal on trade tariffs between the European Union and the United States would “hopefully be signed off before the weekend is over,” Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said.
EU negotiators are trying to land a deal that would avert higher rates of import duties which US president Donald Trump has threatened on goods coming from Europe.
Speaking on Friday, Mr Martin said it would be “foolish” to put any bet on when a deal would be signed off by the EU and Mr Trump.
Work was continuing to get a “framework agreement” over the line, which would comprise the broad outline of a tariff deal, allowing further details to be worked out later.
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“We’re certain there will be detailed discussions afterwards in respect of line by line, in terms of many, many products. And so this will continue notwithstanding a framework agreement, [which] hopefully will be signed off before the weekend is over,” he said.
“Part of the reason for the intensity of those negotiations is to try and tie up as much as we can,” he said.
The current outline of a draft agreement would see the EU accept blanket tariffs of 15 per cent on future trade with the US, up from a 10 per cent levy Mr Trump introduced in early April.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm leading the negotiations, wants any future tariffs on pharmaceuticals to be capped at that level. The EU is also seeking to have higher 25 per cent tariffs the US has put on EU-made cars to be reduced to that rate.
National governments appear willing to stomach an across-the-board tariff of 15 per cent, to end the uncertainty Mr Trump’s threats of potentially much higher levies has caused the European economy, or an escalating trade war if no deal is agreed.
“There has been a degree of volatility in all of this, which has been unsettling for investment and that’s a concern I have,” Mr Martin said.
The EU wanted to secure some “certainty” around US tariffs targeting specific sectors, outside of the blanket rate, he said.
The EU was not anxious to have to turn to possible retaliation, such as counter-tariffs on US products, he said.
Speaking in Luxembourg, the Fianna Fáil leader said he hoped “sense will prevail” in the ongoing negotiations concerning pharmaceutical products.
The sector has avoided US tariffs to date, though Mr Trump previously promised they are coming in a bid to force companies to relocate manufacturing capacity and jobs to the US.
Getting a deal on pharma products was “of equal significance” to the US side, he said.
Any “significant disruption” of the heavily intertwined pharma supply chains would be damaging to the US, and potentially lead to shortages of medicines, Mr Martin said.
Access to the European market had been of huge benefit to US pharma multinationals, he said. “It’s a two-way street … unilateral action on the part of one [side] could ultimately damage the companies themselves and patients and consumers,” he said.
Europe had to look at what it could do to increase trade within the bloc, to compensate for the knock-on impact of US tariffs on transatlantic trade, he said.