This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The European Union is pressing ahead with countermeasures in response to what it said was Donald Trump’s “pure protectionist” and “illegal” decision to impose trade tariffs on steel and aluminium.

The EU has opened a case at the World Trade Organisation after the US imposed a 25% duty on European steel and a 10% duty on European aluminium on Friday morning.

“We are not in a trade war, but we are in a very difficult situation caused by the United States,” said Cecilia Malmström, the EU trade commissioner. “I would not use the term ‘trade war’ because it has a psychological effect.” But she added: “The US is playing a dangerous game here.”

She said the US claim that the tariffs were needed for national security was unjustified and no more than “pure protectionism”.

The EU has not yet made final decisions on tit-for-tat measures on US products, although it has a list of goods it could hit with retaliatory tariffs, including classic American products such as Levi’s jeans, bourbon whiskey, cranberries and peanut butter.

The European commission said it needed to consult with member state diplomats before announcing the goods that will be targeted. “We have not made final decisions on it, but we will use that list of course,” Malmström said.

That final decision is expected within weeks, as officials insisted all EU member states backed Brussels. “All of them feel that at this point in time it is very important to maintain credibility,” said one EU source.

Under WTO rules, EU retaliatory measures cannot come into force until 20 June at the earliest, but the list may take a little longer to go through the EU law-making process.

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In a two-pronged move, Malmström also announced that the EU was taking legal action against China in the WTO for “forcing” European companies seeking to do business there to disclose their technological secrets. Trump has also accused China of stealing US intellectual property.

“If players in the world do not stick to the rule book the system might collapse and that is why we are challenging today both the US and China at the WTO,” said Malmstrom. It demonstrates that we are not choosing any sides, we stand for the mutilateral system, for rule-based global trade.”

The EU measures were part of a swift reaction to Trump’s decision, described by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as a mistake and the UK’s international trade secretary, Liam Fox, as “patently absurd”.



The US imports €3.5bn (£3.06bn) of EU steel and aluminium and officials fear jobs are at stake, with worse to follow if the standoff intensifies.

Markets shrugged off worries about trade war, with the main stockmarket indices in the UK, France and Germany rising, as Italy’s anti-EU parties succeeded in forming a government, avoiding a swift return to the polls that investors had feared. US stocks were also up, on better-than-expected jobs figures.

Germany’s economy minister Peter Altmaier said on Friday: “We hope that the European response will result in a process of reflection in the USA.” He told the German broadcaster ARD that the EU may consider workingwith Mexico and Canada, which were also hit by the US tariffs.

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Bernd Lange, the German socialist MEP who chairs the European parliament’s international trade committee, said the tariffs were illegal and insisted the EU would put countermeasures in place, on “symbolic products like Harley-Davidson to make clear here is a red card.”

Seeking to dial down the rhetoric, the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said: “The European Union is not at war with anyone. We don’t want to be; for us this is out of the question … The European Union is a peace project, including on trade.”

The EU recently announced the formal launch of trade talks with Australia and last year completed negotiations with Japan.



She was speaking alongside China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, who said China and the EU were committed to a rules-based, multilateral global system. The pair were also discussing Iran and North Korea ahead of an EU-China summit in Beijing next month.



Beyond the warm words, however, Brussels and Beijing remain at odds over the heavily subsidised Chinese steel that has depressed global prices. Mogherini acknowledged that “we have some issues” and the EU would continue to address the problem of overcapacity with China.



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Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director, said there was always room to negotiate with Trump, but he was unlikely to be flattered into changing his mind.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Scaramucci, a personal friend of Trump, said the tariffs were a measure to correct the “uneven and unbalanced” trade system.

“I am sure that there are chips on both sides that can get traded to make the problem go away,” he said. “There’s always room in a negotiation with him, but he’s also the type of person that will walk from a negotiation.”

PA contributed to this report