European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen addresses journalists throughout a media convention at EU headquarters in Brussels, Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photograph/Virginia Mayo)
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s govt fee stated Thursday it is going to put commerce retaliation measures on maintain for 90 days. That is to match President Donald Trump’s pause on his sweeping new tariffs and depart room for a negotiated resolution.
European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen stated that the fee, which handles commerce for the bloc’s 27 member international locations, “took notice of the announcement by President Trump.”
New tariffs on 20.9 billion euros ($23 billion) of US items might be placed on maintain for 90 days as a result of “we need to give negotiations an opportunity,” she stated in an announcement.
However she warned: “If negotiations usually are not passable, our countermeasures will kick in.”
Trump imposed a 20-percent levy on items from the EU as a part of his onslaught of tariffs of 10 % and upward towards world buying and selling companions.
An opportunity for negotiations
However Trump stated Wednesday he’ll pause them for 90 days to present international locations an opportunity to barter options to US commerce issues.
Nations topic to the pause will face Trump’s 10 % baseline tariff.
Earlier than Trump’s announcement, EU member international locations voted to approve a set of retaliatory tariffs on $23 billion in items. This was in response to his 25-percent tariffs on imported metal and aluminum that took impact in March.
The EU, the biggest buying and selling accomplice of the US, described them as “unjustified and damaging.”
The EU tariffs have been set to enter impact in levels, some on April 15 and others on Could 15 and Dec. 1. The EU fee didn’t instantly present a listing of the products.
Members of the EU — the world’s largest buying and selling bloc — have stated they like a negotiated deal to resolve a commerce warfare that damages the economies on each side.
The bloc’s prime commerce official has shuttled between Brussels and Washington for weeks attempting to go off a battle.
‘Zero-for-zero’
The EU has supplied Trump a “zero for zero” deal through which each side would eradicate tariffs on industrial items together with autos.
Trump has stated that’s not sufficient to reply US issues and raised the potential for Europe shopping for giant further quantities of US liquefied pure gasoline.
The focused items are a tiny fraction of the 1.6 trillion euros ($1.8 trillion) in US-EU annual commerce.
Some 4.4 billion euros in items and providers crosses the Atlantic every day in what the European Fee calls “a very powerful business relationship on the planet.”
The EU has focused smaller lists of products in hopes of exerting political strain and avoiding financial harm from a wider escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs.
The EU can be engaged on an additional set of countermeasures in response to Trump’s blanket 20 % tariff on all European items, now suspended.
That might embody measures aimed toward US tech firms and the providers sector in addition to commerce in items.
Nonetheless, von der Leyen stated that Europe intends to diversify its commerce partnerships.
She stated that the EU will proceed “participating with international locations that account for 87 % of worldwide commerce and share our dedication to a free and open change of products, providers, and concepts,” and to elevate obstacles to commerce inside its personal single market.
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“Collectively, Europeans will emerge stronger from this disaster,” von der Leyen stated.
