For now, Spanish producers and exporters must hold their breath as EU negotiations take place with Washington. For Mr Pico Lapuente, a big cause of concern is the influence \u2013 or as he sees it, lack of influence \u2013 his sector wields within the European trade bloc.<\/p>\n
“The negotiations representing the EU’s 27 countries are carried out by Brussels,” he says. “In these negotiations, industrial products have a much bigger influence than food.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t like it if, in this negotiation, food products like olive oil were used as mere bargaining chips in order to get a better deal for Europe’s industrial products. That worries me. And I hope it doesn’t happen.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the European Commission told the BBC that in negotiations with the US it will act “in defence of European interests, protecting its workers, consumers and its industries”.<\/p>\n
Jaime Fern\u00e1ndez, of the Grupo Osborne, believes his industry could live with the 10% tariff that is currently in place without suffering too much fallout.<\/p>\n
However, a 20% charge, he says would cause the industry “to reconsider how to accelerate growth in some other markets, which would eventually lead to the relocation of resources from the US”.<\/p>\n
He says his company is already looking at alternative markets in which to invest, such as China, or proven European ham consumers such as France, Italy and Portugal.<\/p>\n
Mr D\u00edaz-Gim\u00e9nez says that is the logical response to the current uncertainty.<\/p>\n
“If I was the CEO of any company with a high exposure to the United States\u2026 I would have sent my entire sales team to find other markets,” he says.<\/p>\n
“And by now, they would have found them. There would be plan Bs and plan Cs, to make sure that we have reduced this exposure to the US.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For now, Spanish producers and exporters must hold their breath as EU negotiations take place with Washington. For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-174191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114661699701179969","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}