President Donald Trump during talks on Wednesday agreed with the delegation of the European Union on measures that would avoid a trade war, the president said after a meeting with the head of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker.
According to Trump, they launched a “new phase in the relationship.”
“First of all, we agreed to work on establishing zero duties, zero non-tariff barriers and zero subsidies for non-automotive manufactured goods,” Trump told reporters in the White House. “We also agreed to step up trade in services, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical products, and soybeans.” Europeans will purchase from the US a significant amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG), added Trump.
According to Trump, negotiations with the EU are aimed to “remove” the issue of duties on the import of European steel and aluminum in the US and about reciprocal duties on the import of American goods into the EU.
The US and the EU agreed not to impose new duties, as long as trade negotiations continue. “The meeting was good and constructive,” Junker said. Washington and Brussels will also work to reform the WTO, Trump said.
European-American trade disputes started in late March, when the United States announced the introduction of import duties on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%), but gave the European Union and a number of other countries a postponement until June 1.
Since June 1, the United States has imposed these restrictions on the EU, Mexico and Canada. Europe reciprocated a month later – on July 1, the EU imposed 25 percent duties on a range of food, whiskey, tobacco, clothing, internal combustion engines, steel and other products from the United States worth $ 3.3 billion. Unlike the conflict between the US and China, which was outright called the “trade war” at the official level, the relations with Europe is, for the time being, just a dispute.
“We are witnessing the height of the trade dispute, which could quickly degenerate into a trade war,” European Commissioner for Budget Guenther Oettinger told the media.
