By Lorne Cook Associated Press
BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union member states have voted to approve the reprisal rates out of $ 23 billion in goods in response to the 25% prices of American President Donald Trump on steel and aluminum imported.
The prices will come into force by stages, some on April 15 and others on May 15 and December 1. The EU executive commission immediately provided a list of goods on Wednesday.
Members of the 27 -country block have repeated their preference for a negotiated agreement to solve trade problems.
“The EU considers unjustified and harmful American prices, causing economic damage to both sides, as well as the global economy,” said the EU executive commission in a statement. “The EU has declared its clear preference to find negotiated results with the United States, which would be balanced and mutually beneficial.”
The targeted goods are a small fraction of the annual trade of $ 1.8 billion in the United States, which sees some $ 4.86 billion in goods and services crossing the Atlantic every day in what the European Commission calls “the most important commercial relationship in the world”.
The head of the EU executive commission, Ursula von der Leyen, offered Trump a zero prices agreement on industrial goods, including cars. But Trump said it was not enough to satisfy us concerns.
The EU has targeted smaller lists of goods in the hope of exerting political pressure and avoiding economic damage of a greater climbing of Tit-For-Tat prices.
The EU is also working on a price response of 20% of Trump on all European goods, imposed within the framework of its radical “reciprocal” prices imposed on global trade partners. This could include measures intended for American technological companies and the service sector as well as the exchange of products.
The French economic minister Eric Lombard said that the second package “will take into account not only European imports, but also other ways we can react”.
Lombard added: “The idea is that with these extremely strong and extremely powerful measures, we can arrive at the negotiation table on an equal footing, so that the two sides of these tasks can be lowered and all our protected economic sectors.”
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
