Overview

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on last Saturday to impose 30% tariffs on products from Mexico and the European Union, two of the United States’ largest trading partners, in a tariff action that has upended global trade since he returned to office in January. A few days ago, the US president had sent letters to more than 20 countries announcing the imposition of new tariffs.

In his letters to the EU and Mexico, Trump said all imports would be subject to the 30% tariff, but would not include “sectoral tariffs” such as the 25% tariff on cars.

In a statement on Saturday, von der Leyen said the EU remains “ready to continue working to reach a deal by the August 1 deadline.”

Experts on Trump’s new tariffs: “It’s a slap in the face for everyone involved in the negotiations.” Experts said that this may just be a “negotiation strategy” of Trump. Brussels hopes to persuade the United States to change its original intention and decide to postpone the countermeasures that were originally scheduled to take effect on Monday.

Inga Fechner, senior economist at ING, a global financial institution, told Deutsche Welle that over the past few weeks, EU negotiators have been emphasizing that the relevant negotiations with the United States are progressing smoothly, so Trump’s sudden announcement of tariffs on August 1 is really surprising. However, Fechner also said: “The good news is that the start date has been extended from July 9 to August 1.” Fechner even believes that this may just be a “negotiation strategy” of Trump.

At the same time, Fechner also admitted that Trump’s tariff threat is “undoubtedly a loud slap in the face to all those who participated in the negotiations and made unremitting efforts to ease the mood of the US side.”

The economist emphasized: “But after all, we still have three weeks, which is a long time. Before August 1, let’s see what happens next.” However, Fechner also said that due to the different positions of EU member states, it is extremely difficult for Brussels to form a unified response plan on tariffs. “In subsequent negotiations, we will see that some countries are really pushing for reciprocal measures, while some countries want to choose a conciliatory approach.”

The EU postpones the launch of countermeasures

Since the United States has already launched tariff measures on a series of EU products, according to the original plan, the EU’s countermeasures worth 21 billion euros against the United States should have taken effect on Monday (July 14). But Reuters learned from the negotiating team that the German government and some other member states advocated for a temporary suspension of countermeasures in the EU vote held over the weekend, hoping to reduce the difficulty of future negotiations with Washington.

In order to avoid exacerbating the conflict and strive to resolve the tariff dispute with the United States through negotiations, European Commission President von der Leyen announced on Sunday (July 13) that the postponement of the launch date of countermeasures to early August was to see whether the United States could still reach an agreement with the European Union. “We still have hope of reaching an agreement,” von der Leyen said.

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