By Julia Payne<\/p>\n
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union could not say when a joint statement on tariffs with the United States would be ready, nor when the White House would issue an executive order on European car import duties, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The EU and U.S. reached a framework trade agreement at the end of July but only the 15% baseline tariff on European exports had so far come into effect, as of last week. EU officials previously said a joint statement would follow the deal “very soon” along with executive orders from U.S. President Donald Trump on key carve-outs.<\/p>\n
“It is an agreement that we believe is strong and the best we could have … Of course, we expect the U.S. to take further steps that are part of this agreement but I don’t believe at this stage we can put a timeline on these engagements,” the European Commission spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The carve-outs include a reduction of the current 27.5% U.S. import tariff on EU cars and car parts to 15%. While duties on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors are currently zero, if they rise as a result of a U.S. probe into imports of those products, Trump assured these would not exceed the 15% ceiling.<\/p>\n
As part of the deal, the EU and U.S. are still finalising a list of products where tariffs would go down to zero on both sides, such as on aircraft, while other products would revert to a much lower most-favoured-nation rate. Separately, negotiations on rates for spirits and wine are expected to drag into the autumn.<\/p>\n
Europe still faces tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminium exports to the U.S. but the two sides have agreed to set a quota system and a “metals alliance” that would later lower duties. In the interim, however, EU smelters are under pressure as U.S. tariffs have led to a surge in exports of their main input, scrap metal.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Julia Payne; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Rachna Uppal)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Julia Payne BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union could not say when a joint statement on tariffs with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[32,2000,299,5187,2557,120800,1699],"class_list":{"0":"post-338437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-european-commission","13":"tag-european-exports","14":"tag-european-union"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115015818597014194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338437","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=338437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}