After the carrot, it is important to remember that a stick is also hidden. The European Union has greeted 90 -day tariff as a “window of opportunity” to seek “constructive and mutually acceptable” solutions. First it was the United States that froze the measures for three months, movement that Brussels has replicated freezing its first countermeasures, also for 90 days. The European Commissioner for Commerce, Maros Sefcovic, will travel again on Monday to Washington to resume negotiations. At the same time, however, the Ministers of Economy and Finance gathered this Friday in Warsaw wanted to make it clear to the US that the EU maintains “all the options on the table” to answer if these conversations do not come to fruition.
“To give negotiations an opportunity for success. But we maintain all the options on the table, in case the negotiations fail,” said Economy Commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, at the end of the informal meeting of the Eurogroup in the Polish capital, which is followed by an Ecofin meeting, which will last until Saturday. These options could also include a lien to services such as digital, land in which there is a “substantial deficit” in the commercial balance, he recalled.
Nobody wants for now, however, put on the worst stage. “The pause gives a window of opportunity. What we will do now is to use these 90 days to see if we can identify a negotiated alternative to a path that will take us all to a world of less growth, of higher inflation and many risks to all the advances achieved in recent years,” said the president of the Eurogroup, Pascal Donohoe. This gloomy panorama is something that “in Europe we don’t want to see,” he said.
It is in this framework that SEFCOVIC makes your bags again this weekend, heading to Washington. “The commissioner goes to Washington to try to sign agreements. In that we are concentrated,” said the commission spokesman, Olof Gill. But also from there it has been made clear that the window of opportunity is not infinite: “All options are for the case that [las negociaciones] They do not lead to a good result, ”the community spokesman agreed.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has given clues about how the scenario would be if these conversations do not end in agreement. In an interview in Financial Timeshe has insisted that they are going to look for a “completely balanced” pact with Washington, but if it is not given, they could “impose a tax on advertising income of digital services”, which would affect large technological ones such as Meta, Google and Facebook. In this sense, he explained that the measure would consist of an applied tariff throughout the single market.
The one opened by the American Donald Trump makes anyone dare to make predictions either in the long term or in the short term. Above all, because there are still tariffs, the generalized to all countries of 10%, as well as 25% levies to steel and aluminum, and cars.
The president of the Eurogroup, Pascal Donohoe, said “confident” that the economic pillars of the Eurozone are “strong and resilient.” In the Spanish case, the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, has added that the country faces the volatile situation with a “guarantee point” that represents a model of —Ha quoted the forecasts of the IMF, which has raised its perspectives of growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Spanish up to 2.5% – and with the implementation of a “safety and protection network for citizens”.
BIRTH TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
However, a tariff war would have an in a world economy that has been showing signs of fatigue years. Dombrovskis recalled in this regard that 10% of tariffs that Washington maintains at a general level despite the tariff truce is a “blow to the global economy.”
According to the simulations that his team has made, based on 20% tariffs on the American tariff impact, American GDP would be reduced by 0.8% and 1.4% to 2027, he indicated. The negative impact on the EU would be less than in the US, around 0.2% of GDP. And if the tariffs are perceived as permanent or if there are more countermeasures, the economic consequences would be even more negative, it has warned: up to 3.1% -3.3% for the US, and 0.5% -0.6% for the EU and 1.2% for world GDP, while world trade would decrease by 7.7% within three years, they revealed.
“The tariffs go against the political and economic logic of a deep and lasting transatlantic commercial association, valued at 1.6 billion euros in 2023,” Dombrovskis insisted, who on the eve of the new negotiating attempt, has remembered that “Europe does not want this confrontation.”
According to Donohoe, the European Ministers of Economics have highlighted the “unity” of the twenty -seven in the face of this common challenge. After verifying Trump’s attempts to negotiate individually with some countries, Donohoe has manifested “absolutely sure” that Member States will continue to “work together to maintain total support” to the commission that, as he recalled this repeatedly in the past days, is the one that has the exclusive competence to negotiate in trade.
MEPs ask that “not harm patients” with medications tariffs
If things are not going well and Trump resumes tariffs, one of the next sectors to sanction could be the pharmacist. Concerned about the impact not only economic, but also about their potential danger in the health of patients on either side of the Atlantic, a fortnight of Eurodiputados has asked the European Commission that, in the worst case, Brussels act carefully and that avoids, if possible, replicate with medication tariffs. “As a general principle, the EU should not impose drug tariffs,” says the Spanish socialist Eurodiput Nicolás González Casares in the letter, sent to the commissioners Sefcovic and Health, Olivier Varhelyi. But if I had to do it, he adds, tariffs should “limit themselves only to US medications for which there is a European equivalent, thus guaranteeing that there are no negative repercussions on the access of patients with essential treatments.” In any case, it emphasizes, key medications such as oncological, those of rare diseases and “all” vaccines should be “totally exempt” from any reprisal.
