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The EU has a “robust plan to retaliate” towards US tariffs anticipated on Wednesday, the president of the European Fee has stated.
Ursula von der Leyen informed the European parliament on Tuesday that the bloc was ready to hit providers exports together with these from Huge Tech corporations if US President Donald Trump imposed “reciprocal tariffs” on all imports into the US.
Brussels would negotiate “from a place of power”, she stated. “Europe holds a whole lot of playing cards. From commerce to expertise to the scale of our market. However this power can also be constructed on our readiness to take agency countermeasures. All devices are on the desk,” she stated.
The EU has the flexibility to hit services exports, the place the US has a surplus. That might embody suspending some mental property rights and excluding corporations from public procurement contracts below its enforcement regulation.
An additional escalation could be to make use of the “anti-coercion” instrument for the primary time. This permits even harder motion on mental property and public procurement. The bloc might cut back entry by US monetary providers corporations to its market.
Such measures require a weighted majority of member states to agree.
Brussels has to this point delayed additional duties on as much as €26bn of US items after Washington imposed metal and aluminium tariffs, as a result of some international locations together with France feared a good larger counter-attack from the US.
The EU has but to announce any response to Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on vehicles. Von der Leyen warned that the US would possibly transfer subsequent on semiconductors, prescribed drugs and timber.
She stated the EU nonetheless needed to barter first as a result of tariffs would gas inflation, price US jobs and “create a bureaucratic monster of recent customs procedures”.
Officers stated they hoped the deliberate US announcement on Wednesday was merely the prelude to a spherical of talks.
Nevertheless, the US has insisted on discussing not simply tariff ranges however tax charges and EU well being requirements, which it believes unfairly block its farm produce.
Washington additionally says EU member states’ VAT techniques are unfair to its corporations. It additionally desires international locations that apply digital taxes to expertise corporations to scrap them, and for Brussels to loosen digital regulation on the grounds that it punishes US corporations, and stifles innovation and free speech.
The Monetary Instances reported final week that the fee would quickly levy fines on Apple and Meta for breaching its Digital Markets Act.
Von der Leyen supplied to work with the US on pressuring China to vary its export-led financial mannequin, with out naming the nation instantly.
There have been “extreme points on the earth of commerce”, she stated. “Overcapacities, imbalances, unfair subsidies, denial of market entry, mental property theft. I hear People, after they say some others have taken benefit of the principles. I agree. We additionally undergo from it. So allow us to work on it.”
