Cecilia Malmström at the event | Wiktor Dabkowski EU ‘will have to respond’ to Trump steel threat, says trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said measure would hit EU ‘very, very hard.’

Brussels "will need to respond" if U.S. President Donald Trump slaps tariffs on steel from the EU, China and other countries, the EU's trade commissioner said today.

“We should be very, very clear …. [that] this is hitting the European Union very, very hard,” Cecilia Malmström said at a POLITICO Playbook Breakfast event in Brussels.

She was responding to a presidential memorandum that Trump signed in April, ordering the U.S. Department of Commerce to launch a Section 232 investigation on whether to curb steel imports on “national security” grounds. A decision on whether to impose such tariffs is expected as early as this week.

Malmström pointed out that European countries are close security partners of the U.S. "We are allies, we are friends. Almost all EU countries are members of NATO," she said.

She added that the reason for U.S. concerns on steel imports were market distortions and overcapacity in China, and added that "we share [these] concerns." U.S. tariffs are "maybe not targeted vis-à-vis Europe, but it will hit us very hard," she said.

A recent study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggested that Trump's steel tariffs will have less effect on China but instead impact heavily on U.S. allies, because Washington has already banned many Chinese imports due to price dumping.

Malmström said Brussels would first need to analyze the detail of the U.S. decision once it is released before deciding what action to take.

Yet, she reiterated: “We will have to respond in different means.”