The European Commission has urged the United States to play by international trade rules to avoid what could be a damaging global trade war.

The Commission's powerful vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis told the ABC's AM program he remained concerned about fallout from trade tensions between the US and China despite the European Union winning an exemption from Donald Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminium.

"One issue which we are worried about is the [US] approach to multilateralism," Mr Dombrovskis said from Brussels.

"We [the EU] are committed to the rules-based global system and that countries actually play according to the rules. I think that is very important to preserve [an] orderly, economical ... trade system globally."

"We always emphasise that it is actually important to stick with those WTO [World Trade Organisation] rules and stick with WTO dispute settlement mechanisms."

Mr Dombrovskis said the EU — a traditional trade competitor to the US — remained committed to the WTO framework and said the EU had been ready to "respond in a proportionate way within WTO rules" if it had not been exempted from Mr Trump's initial tariffs on steel and aluminium.

"It's clear that the EU is going to react if these one-sided tariffs are going to be imposed by the US," Mr Dombrovskis said in March when Mr Trump announced his initial plans for tariffs.

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While conceding it was up to the WTO to determine if Mr Trump had flouted global trade rules, Mr Dombrovskis said the current tensions risked damaging Europe's economic recovery 10 years after the global financial crisis.

"We actually see that there is a quite strong economic performance globally and all 28 EU member states are back to growth so, of course, it is important to keep with this positive momentum," he said.

"If you look at Europe, there were, or still are, certain concerns of the rise of popularism, and in Europe we think that it is important that benefits of economic growth are felt by all citizens."

Mr Dombrovskis, a former prime minister of Latvia, said the EU would be monitoring negotiations to ensure further tariffs in imports to the US were avoided.

Mr Trump recently warned 25 per cent tariffs might be imposed on imports of European cars accusing the EU of being unfair trade behaviour.

Follow Peter Ryan on Twitter @peter_f_ryan.