A delegation of senior experts from the European Commission led by trade department chief Sabine Weyand is in Washington today and tomorrow to meet US counterparts, the EU executive confirmed on Tuesday.
The aim is to progress negotiations after the US launched a tariff volley against the EU mid-March: imposing a 25% levy on imports of steel, aluminium and cars and a 10% blanket tariff on all EU imports. A 20% blanket tariff on goods was suspended for 90 days pending negotiations.
EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič conceded that negotiations are “not easy” during an exchange with MEPs on Tuesday, noting that the EU offered the US a zero-for-zero tariff on cars and industrial goods.
“We are not weak, under undue pressure, to accept a deal which is unfair to us,” the Commissioner told the MEPs.
Šefčovič, who has travelled to the US three times since trade hostilities started, told Parliament he had “personally” discussed with US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade representative Jamieson Greer how the US and the EU would be “stronger together” by collaborating, starting with “dependencies on critical raw materials, medicines and overcapacities in steel.”
Overcapacities have been identified by the EU and the US as an issue both share vis-a-vis China, Commission spokesperson Olof Gill said on Monday. “It is not about teaming up against China,” but about “tackling a problem we both identified,” he added.
The EU, which has a €50 billion trade surplus with the US, is also ready to “look at areas such as energy, notably liquid natural gas, some agricultural products, soyabeans for example, where there could be potential increase of EU imports from the US,” Gill also claimed last Friday.
After a meeting on Monday between French president Emmanuel Macron and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at which trade was discussed, a French official said that the aim of the negotiation between the EU and the US was to “completely withdraw” the tariffs imposed by the US, including the 10% blanket tariff imposed by the US since 2 April.
“This asymmetrical situation must not become the new norm in the relationship between the EU and the US,” the French official added.
