Donald Trump has threatened to slap 25% tariffs on the European Union claiming the 27-country bloc was “formed to screw the United States”.
Speaking at his first cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the US president said he would soon release details of the latest tariff threat. “We have made a decision and we’ll be announcing it very soon. It’ll be 25%,” he said.
The EU is the US’s third largest trading partner alongside China. Trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs on the US’s two largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, next week.
Trump did not give further details but mentioned carmakers and said the levies would be applied “generally”. “And that’ll be on cars and all other things,” he said.
Trump has made a series of announcements about imposing tariffs on the US’s largest trading partners but has repeatedly delayed imposing the levies on Canada and Mexico.
Earlier this week Trump defended his tariff threats and said foreign cars, drugs and semiconductor chips would be hit within weeks.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, met with Trump in Washington this week and had appeared confident that he had talked Trump out of a trade dispute with the EU and to concentrate instead on his dealings with China.
“Come on, you cannot have a trade war with China and Europe at the same time. I hope I convinced him,” Macron told Fox News after the meeting.
According to Bloomberg, Trump’s tariffs could hit as much as $29.3bn (€28bn) of the bloc’s exports. The EU has pledged to retaliate immediately if the US imposes tariffs on its member countries’ exports. “The EU sees no justification for the imposition of tariffs on its exports. We will react to protect the interests of European businesses, workers and consumers from unjustified measures,” the bloc’s executive body said earlier this month.
The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said the EU should do all it can to avoid “totally unnecessary and stupid tariff wars”.
Many economists and even conservative publications, including the Wall Street Journal, have warned that Trump’s plans risk hurting the US economy. On Wednesday, Trump took to Truth Social, his social media platform, to attack a Journal editorial that argued his tariffs on Canada and Mexico would backfire, hurting the US economy.
Calling the argument “soooo wrong”, Trump wrote: “The tariffs will drive massive amounts of auto manufacturing to MICHIGAN, a State which I just easily one [sic] in the Presidential Election,” he wrote.
