EU considers response to Trump trade tariffs

DW (English)

Imports from EU countries to the US will face new tariffs of 20% starting on April 9. In Luxembourg, EU trade ministers are gathering to discuss the bloc's response and options to avoid an all-out trade war.

Transcript

00:00Every day four and a half billion euros worth of goods and services cross the Atlantic between the European Union and the United States.

00:07This bilateral trade is the largest in the world.

00:11The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration now make doing business in the U.S. more costly for Europe and

00:18Brussels is preparing to respond strongly.

00:22But the preferred option in the EU is a negotiated solution with Washington,

00:27Germany's finance minister even calling for removing all tariffs on all imports.

00:33The easiest way to assure balance and fairness is if everyone goes to zero and then we have free trade and efficiency economies of scale.

00:42The key is to send the signal that we are willing up to including reducing tariffs all the way to zero.

00:49This would be welcomed by the world's richest man.

00:52At the end of the day I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally in my view to a zero tariff situation

01:02effectively creating a free trade zone.

01:04Free trade between the European Union and the United States remains an aspiration and experts I've spoken to here agree that

01:12cancelling the tariffs on the goods and services currently traded between the U.S. and the EU would be good for both sides.

01:20Dropping tariffs bilaterally between the U.S. and the EU most definitely would be the best outcome.

01:25Having cheaper trade between those two economies would would benefit both both of them.

01:32Whereas the flip side if we if we have tariffs 20 percent on each side that increase costs for both sides.

01:38Tariffs are a tax.

01:39Tariffs are an import tax and that can be lowered very quickly very easily.

01:44Liberation Day.

01:45On the day he announced the U.S.'s new measures Donald Trump suggested he could be open to zero tariffs to all of the foreign

01:53presidents prime ministers kings queens ambassadors and everyone else who will soon be calling to ask for exemptions from these

02:01tariffs. I say terminate your own tariffs drop your barriers.

02:07Conventional wisdom says there are no winners in a trade war.

02:11It is understood in Europe that businesses and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic stand to lose if Brussels retaliates in a way

02:20that raises the risk of a trade war of tit for tat tariffs.

02:25Calls for zero tariffs a free trade zone between the EU and the U.S. are growing louder from business.

02:32But it will have to be the will of the politicians before it can become reality.

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