Trump threatens to impose 25% tariffs on goods from EU
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on cars and other goods imported from the European Union.
Trump’s latest tariff announcement raised the prospect of a trade war with the powerful political and economic bloc of 27 European countries.
“We have made a decision and we’ll be announcing it very soon,” Trump said during the first Cabinet meeting of his second presidency.
“It’ll be 25 percent, generally speaking, and that will be on cars and all other things.”Trump reiterated his oft-heard gripes, saying the EU has many trade restrictions and does not accept U.S. cars or agricultural products.
Without going into the specifics of his EU tariff plan, he said, “Let’s be honest, the European Union was formed in order to screw the United States.
That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it. But now I’m president.”Since his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump has unleashed a wave of tariff threats, including against major U.S. trading partners and allies, motivated by his belief the imposts will revive domestic production and create jobs.
In addition to China, Canada and Mexico, he has put particular focus on the EU, also criticizing many of its members for not spending enough on their defense.
The Trump administration is separately planning to impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.
But he has paused the imposition of those measures for a one-month period, possibly until March 4, on condition that the two countries take more steps to crack down on illegal migration and fentanyl smuggling.
But, as planned, he introduced an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports in early February, which immediately led Beijing to announce retaliatory measures.
Earlier, Trump said he is likely to unveil tariffs of about 25 percent on imported automobiles, including those from Europe, and some reciprocal import taxes on April 2.
It is unclear whether Trump’s latest tariff proposal seeks to apply a 25 percent blanket import tax on all goods from the EU.
On Wednesday, he said the EU is a “different case than Canada” and the regional bloc has “really taken advantage of us in a different way.”
