trade agreement reached on August 21 with the United States<\/a>, but the legislative proposal for tariff reductions on a wide range of US industrial and agricultural products will face a tricky path through the European Parliament which will start considering the measure next week.<\/p>\nThis legislative move should offer immediate relief to the EU automotive sector,\u00a0as the US committed to retroactively lower its 27.5% tariffs on EU cars to 15% from 1 August, once the Commission proposed the legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among the concessions granted to the US, the Commission\u2019s proposal provides for reducing tariffs to 0% on the vast majority of US industrial products – ranging from machinery\u00a0to pharmaceutical products, some chemicals, plastics and fertilizers – for which the EU aims to break its dependence on Russia. The proposal also targets some agri-products, such as fruits, juices and certain seeds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not costly for us,\u201d a senior EU official said, pointing out that existing tariffs levied by the bloc on these products are very low.<\/p>\n
The Commission has also declared privileged access to its market for certain agricultural products, whose tariffs will be reduced \u2014 such as certain vegetables, fruits and grape juices.<\/p>\n
Tariff-rate quotas are also planned for 20 product groups, including pork (25,000 tonnes), dairy products (10,000 tonnes), cheese (10,000 tonnes), and soybeans (400,000 tonnes), which will benefit from 0% tariffs below the set thresholds.<\/p>\n
Despite a trade agreement widely seen as heavily tilted in favour of the US \u2014 with the EU facing 15% tariffs under the deal \u2014 Brussels foresees the possibility of suspending these tariff advantages on US products if the US fails to implement the 21 August agreement, or if a sudden surge in US imports on the European market poses serious risks to EU\u00a0industry.<\/p>\n
The legislative proposal needs the buy-in of the European co-legislator, the European Parliament and the EU Council, which represents the member states.<\/p>\n
An “unbalanced” deal<\/p>\n
MEPs responsible for monitoring trade issues will meet for what promises to be a heated session on 3 September, with some having criticised the deal as unbalanced. Sabine Weyand, Director-General of DG Trade and one of the chief negotiators, will attend to answer their questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitically, some MEPs saw the conclusion of the agreement as a humiliation and a surrender,\u201d French liberal MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne told Euronews, adding: \u201cEspecially since we were promised predictability \u2014 yet Trump is already threatening tariffs on countries implementing digital legislation. The Commission is clearly uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of the proposal on tariffs reduction, the MEPs are waiting for a second legislative proposal on the whole deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to understand the agreement much better before we can be decisive and say yes or no,\u201d Swedish MEP J\u00f6rgen\u00a0Warborn (EPP) told Euronews, \u201cI\u2019m myself concerned because I have not yet understood whether the deal was compatible with WTO rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to WTO rules, any country that grants a preferential tariff to one country must extend those terms to others.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of turbulence when it comes to trade at these times. We need a rule-based space and not that the EU is part of breaking WTO rules,\u201d Warborn added.<\/p>\n
Within the S&D group, some are betting on the continuation of the negotiations to improve the deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deal is quite unbalanced and we need to see real effort from the EU Commission to obtain more exemptions and a clear path for an agreement on steel and aluminium,\u201d a lawmaker from S&D said, adding: \u201cOtherwise we should go back to the possible countermeasures.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deal published on August 21 does not address the aluminium and steel sectors, which remain subject to tariffs of up to 50%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 29\/08\/2025 – 10:42 GMT+2 \u2022Updated 14:41 ADVERTISEMENT The EU Commission made its opening move in implementing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[7221,2557,20730,1201,554,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-383393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-eu-policy","9":"tag-european-commission","10":"tag-european-parliament","11":"tag-trade","12":"tag-trump-tariffs","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115114070833520762","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383393","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=383393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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