The\u00a0European Commission demanded on Sunday that the United States (US) stick to the terms of a\u00a0European Union (EU), US trade deal reached last year, after the US Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s global tariffs and he responded with new levies across the board.<\/p>\n
The Commission, which negotiates trade policy on behalf of the 27\u00a0EU\u00a0member states, said Washington must provide “full clarity” on the steps it intends to take following the court ruling.<\/p>\n
After the court struck down Trump’s global tariffs on Friday, the US president announced temporary, across the board tariffs of 10%, which he then hiked to 15% a day later.<\/p>\n
“The current situation is not conducive to delivering ‘fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial’ transatlantic trade and investment, as agreed to by both sides” in the joint statement setting out the terms of last year’s trade agreement, the Commission said. “A deal is a deal.”<\/p>\n
The comments were far more strongly worded than the Commission’s initial response on Friday, which had said only that it was studying the outcome of the Supreme Court decision and keeping in contact with the US administration.<\/p>\n
Last year’s trade deal set a 15% US tariff rate for most\u00a0EU\u00a0goods, apart from those covered by other sectoral tariffs such as on steel.<\/p>\n
It also allowed zero tariffs on some products such as aircraft and spare parts. The\u00a0EU\u00a0agreed to remove import duties on many US goods and withdrew a threat to retaliate with higher levies.<\/p>\n
“In particular,\u00a0EU\u00a0products must continue to benefit from the most competitive treatment, with no increases in tariffs beyond the clear and all-inclusive ceiling previously agreed,” the\u00a0EU\u00a0executive said, adding that unpredictable tariffs were disruptive and undermined confidence across global markets.<\/p>\n
It said that\u00a0EU\u00a0Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic had discussed the issue with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Saturday.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15404,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-24092","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"European Commission demanded that the US stick to the terms of EU, US trade deal","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/24092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/24092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26880,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/24092\/revisions\/26880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=24092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}