Brussels – The European Union does not really make instinctive reactions. And with regard to commercial wars, he prepares his case, built a consensus among its members – and saves his most painful reprisals until the end.
Donald Trump’s unprecedented tariff attack is no exception.
Just after the block locked up on Wednesday in his response to Trump steel and aluminum prices, the American president, the American president announced a 90 -day truce on the “reciprocal” rates he imposed on the “Liberation Day” a week earlier.
Trump had hit the 27 nations block with a 20% function on all goods. Under pressure while the financial markets melted, it has half the 10% levy – the reference base that it has established in its attempt to collect investments and industrial jobs lost to globalization at home.
It has therefore happened that on Thursday, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen suspended the EU prices on 20.9 billion euros in American exports before even taking effect. These are the reprisals that have never happened. At least not yet.
“We want to give negotiations a chance,” said Von Der Leyen in an article on social networks.
This has been followed by a botter: “If the negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will be triggered. Preparatory work on new countermeasures continue. As I have already said, all the options remain on the table.”
By design as much as by strategy, the reaction of the block to Trump evolves slowly, anchored in a legal justification and carefully weighted by internal consensus – with companies, but above all, with the member countries of the block.
Indeed, if the commercial policy can be the lawn of the commission, Brussels still needs political coverage.
Under the EU arcanic rules, commercial stairs generally require the support of a “qualified majority” of national capitals – at least 15 of the 27 EU member countries. And even in cases where the Commission can legally drive national governments, it tends to create coalitions, knowing that the power it exercises has been delegated by the Governments of the EU.
In other words, if you have to talk to 27 friends before becoming public, it tends to prevent emotional explosions. (Von der Leyen’s announcement followed a meeting of EU envoys in a “secure room” to discuss Trump’s pricing retirement. Unlike the American president, she cannot reign by decree or by social media.)
“The imperative to design negotiation strategies which are anchored in the support of the Member States oblige the Commission to play the long match,” said David Kleimann, an expert in senior trade in the ODI reflection group.
“The striking preference for well-prepared negotiations is currently taking place in favor of the EU, because the stock market and bond markets have caused more damage to Trump’s pricing plans than any immediate response of reprisals could not afford,” he added.
Despite all the relief on the truce of 90 days of Trump, its 25% prices on steel and aluminum, as well as on cars, remain in force.
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The EU insists that he can intensify if he owes – and even designed an exchange of “bazooka”, known as the anti -coercion instrument, to retaliate the type of economic intimidation that Trump practiced. But the deployment would take at least six months and two more qualified majorities.
While the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Ireland said it during a meeting of the EU trade ministers in Luxembourg which paved the way for the vote on Wednesday countermeasures, the activation of ACI would represent an extraordinary escalation. “It is in many ways the nuclear option,” he told journalists.
Sigh of relief
Thus, when Trump called on a three-month break from Tit-For-Tat trade on Wednesday on Wednesday, his forced hand for the imminent risk of a global financial crisis, Brussels sighed in relief. “Wait and see” is paying, reflected the block. At least for the moment.
“The stock markets do work for us,” said an EU diplomat earlier this week, while American capital indices flirted with a bearing market territory and a race on the bonds of the Treasury has raised fears that the stability of the global financial system is in danger.
The block was delighted with the Trump’s pricing suspension and responded within 24 hours with its own 90-day break on its countermeasures against the prices of steel and aluminum that Trump imposed on March 12, opening a transatlantic front in his world trade war.
The break, in the thought of the EU, gives a necessary breathing space to everyone, including Trump and the markets, to calm down and resume their minds.
As a second EU diplomat said: “Let’s talk, and seriously this time, otherwise we still retaliate.”
Bourbon, soy
The purpose of EU’s strategy is to harm Trump republican cohorts and their Maga electoral base as much as possible – without injuring European interests.
With these objectives, patience is a virtue and restraint is power, Brussels officials stressed.
When he designed his list of prices to meet the American steel and aluminum tasks, the commission designed the upcoming response in three distinct waves of tasks from April 15 to December 1, depending on the product.
A price of 25% on soybeans, the most precious element of the block list of the block, was to arrive last, giving European farmers, who use the product for animal feed, time to adapt and get their supplies in Brazil or Argentina, for example.
More than 80% of American soy -to -EU exports come from Louisiana, the original state of the Republican President of the Mike Johnson Chamber – something of senior EU officials are eager to emphasize.
As for minimizing pain: lobbying by French, Italian and Irish governments has obtained the withdrawal of Kentucky Bourbon from a list of reprisals dating from Trump’s first mandate. The Commission prefers that everyone is on board rather than exposing national leaders to Trump’s threat to hit European alcohol exports with 200% prices.
Reason to be
While Trump wants to take a demolition ball to the multilateral trade system that Washington fed after the Second World War, the European Union is not ready to abandon it so easily. After all, the single market is undoubtedly the greatest success of the block and the rules of the rules is part of his DNA.
This means playing according to the rules established, the World Trade Organization acting as an arbitrator, even if Washington has paralyzed its operation by blocking legal appointments at the highest Court of Appeal of the WTO.
“Any offer that we make in the United States must comply with the WTO rules. At the moment, we cannot afford to appear that we have also decided to ignore the rules,” said Ignacio García Bécero, who was the American point person in the commission’s sales department during Trump’s first mandate.
Until now, EU capitals are hosting the commission approach. Even if Bourbon, thank you to French exceptionalism, I have a special treatment, capitals always believe that the pain has also been shared. This week’s trade countermeasures were supported by 26 member countries with only Hungary, a perennial, dissident foreigner.
“Member States are almost relieved not to have to face this themselves,” said a third EU diplomat.
“But the speed at which we have to react is slightly more controversial.”
Koen Verhelst and Jakob Weizman contributed the reports.
Politices
