Donald Trump threatens high EU car tariffs if deal is not reached
US President Donald Trump has threatened to slap “very high” tariffs on car imports from the European Union unless it strikes a trade deal, accusing the bloc of being “tougher than China” to deal with.
In an unexpected press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump trained his sights on the EU, saying: “They haven’t treated us right… they have trade barriers where you can’t trade, they have tariffs all over the place.”
In a separate interview with CNBC, Trump threatened to apply tariffs to car imports unless the EU agreed to a trade deal.
“I’m going to have to take action and the action will be very high tariffs on their cars and on other things that come into our country,” he said.
In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said the tariffs could be 25 per cent.
The threat of punitive car tariffs has long hung over European manufacturers, but Trump has repeatedly delayed applying them.
Yet in his press conference the President indicated that, following the signing of a “phase one” trade deal with China last month, he would tackle the EU next.
“I’ll be honest, I wanted to wait ‘til I finished China before I went to work on, respectfully, Europe,” he said.
“They are frankly more difficult to do business with than China. We have a great relationship with China now.”
Trump said he sympathised with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson over his dealings with the EU. “They are actually more difficult to do business with than China,” he repeated, “all you have to do is ask Boris.”
Trump said he was hopeful that the US could strike a deal with the EU before the Presidential election in 2020. “They have to do it,” he said.
It came as a top trade wonk drew a similar comparison between the EU and China, slamming the bloc’s insistence that its trading partners “harmonise” their regulations with EU policies such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Writing in Morning Wire Shanker Singham, chief executive of Competere, said that by doing so the EU “acts much like China, which forces firms to give up protections on intellectual property and other rights if they want access to its market”.
“Should other nations accede to this bullying, the result will be the destruction of global wealth on a massive scale,” he added.