Targeted tariffs and negotiation efforts: EU seeks response to Trump with alliances with China in the background

Brussels – Responding, but without forcing the hand, and forging new and even unprecedented alliances to put pressure on the United States and produce a boomerang effect that would force US President Donald Trump to turn back on tariffs imposed on Europe and beyond. There is an EU strategy, and it is beginning to emerge. There is an EU strategy, and it is starting to emerge. The 12-star club is so concerned that it devoted a meeting of trade ministers to trans-Atlantic relations to draw the line, and all that is needed is an agreement, which is what trade ministers are seeking at the current meeting in Luxembourg.

Sweden is the one to lay the cards on the table. “EU counter-duties must be well targeted and proportionate,” said Swedish Trade Minister Benjamin Dous. This is the precondition for a response that must aim to force Washington and the Trump administration to go back on their decisions and put the White House in a corner. “When the EU, Canada, and China impose counter-tariffs in the coming days, the pressure on the United States will increase,” continues Dous, who hints that one of the effects produced by Trump and his own choices is pushing the People’s Republic of China, which Europe considers hostile and an enemy, into the arms of Europe. “Of course, important issues remain to be resolved, such as reciprocity conditions, but there is no question that China remains an important trading partner,”  Dutch Foreign Trade Minister Reinette Klever stresses and confirms.
The ultimate goal is and remains an amicable and agreed solution. That is the prevailing stance around the table. “We cannot be the ones to take the trade war to a higher level,” said Latvia’s minister, which, on closer inspection, is the same as the Polish rotating presidency of the EU Council. “So far, the approach has been, ‘first we act and then we discuss,’ we would like to reverse the paradigm,” stresses Michał Baranowski, Poland’s undersecretary for Economic Development. It is most likely the direction the 27 member states will give the European Commission.

Italy also embraces the stance of targeted responses to show that the EU is not standing idly by, with firmer countermeasures only later. “We absolutely have to work to avoid a trade war, which would be exacerbating for the US and our businesses,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani stressed. “We must negotiate; a united EU must do it.” In this, the Forza Italia leader continues, Italy “will support all initiatives of [Trade] Commissioner Sefcovic, in whom we place extreme trust,” he adds for what is a blow to the League’s majority allies, conversely intent on bilateral and separate Italian-US negotiations.

Regardless of how it ends, the issue of the tariffs wanted by Trump highlights a general shift away from the traditional logic adopted so far by a model that both sides of the Atlantic see as outdated. Trump does not accept that the model defended and promoted by the United States goes against American interests: ‘business as usual’ is fine as long as the trade balance favors the US. Otherwise, the rest of the world has to pay. On the other hand, there is at least a part of Europe that views free trade in a similar way, which is fruitful only intermittently.

“We don’t want tariffs. We want more trade. Trade is always good,” said Sweden’s minister. Remarks that contrast how the agreement between the EU and Mercosur was received, which was surrounded by criticism, signaling that trade is no longer considered this great achievement. Indeed, there is no shortage of discontent in Europe, and the one in Germany is one of its primary ones.

Robert Habeck, Germany’s outgoing Economy Minister, comments on Elon Musk, who now hopes for a zero-tariff EU-North America free trade area. “It’s a sign of weakness and fear. Maybe he should go to Trump and tell him that before he talks about tariffs, he has to solve this mess he created.”