There are two weeks left for the end of the end of the truce given by Donald Trump for the entry into force of its tariffs, but the European Union does not lose hope of reaching a commercial pact (or, at least, a principle of agreement) that allows the EU to overcome the blow of the taxes with which the president of the United States threatened last Saturday:
As part of that effort against a clock that marks the minutes until the expiration of the term on August 1, the Commission of Commerce, Maros Sefcovic, traveled to Washington on Wednesday to be seen in two meetings separately with the secretary and the representative of Trump’s trade, Howard Lutnick and Jamieson Greer, respectively. “The EU is still very anxious to negotiate with our country, for obvious reasons,” said White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, at her usual press conference. Leavitt also insisted that the letters, 25 in total, sent by Trump last week, suppose “closed deals” for the countries that received them, and that those countries are “welcome to having more conversations” to avoid the respective ones Rate.
And that is precisely what the EU is doing, with the 30% figure contained in the letter addressed to Brussels on the table and doubts about whether Trump will back back once (or several times) more before August 1. The percentage is an escalation with respect to the tariffs of 20%, badly called “reciprocal”, with which Trump threatened the EU in April. The letter arrived in the middle of the contacts between both parties, which were intensified as the date of July 9 was approaching, the first ultimatum that Trump accused unilaterally.
The threatening letter last Saturday has not ended the European hopes to reach a agreed solution. As an expression of that trust, he communicated the next day his intention to extend the suspension of the first tariff retaliation that the EU approved in April against the United States at least until the new term of August 1 ends.
Reality bath
In spite of the new Slovak Slovak Avcovic to Washington, few in Brussels believe that the outcome will arrive soon. In the European capital, the idea that the announcement will arrive more stuck to the date of August 1. After the reality bath last week, when the official spokesmen themselves talked about an “principle of agreement” in days, prudence prevails. There are even sources from the EU Executive who warn that the end seems to be glimpsed, since Von der Leyen travels to Japan and China.
The confidence that the negotiations give as a fruit a pact have not aborted the preparations in Brussels for the hypothetical case that everything goes to the fret. The Commission presented this week to the Member States a list of US imports to impose additional tariffs that amount to 72,000 million euros; Among those products
In addition, as European sources confirm, work in more replicas in case the threat of 30% tariffs for a wide range of EU products exported to the United States, to which you have to add 50% of additional customs rights for steel, aluminum or copper (again, since August 1) and 25% for cars and their components.
That could bring the imposition of encumbrances to the trade of services in which the United States generates surplus, contrary to what happens with the exchanges of goods. If the time is finally to impose some kind of surcharge to the trade of services quickly, it is most likely that the EU activates a faster way than that of resorting to the World Trade Organization.
The EU was second in the great tariff cardboard that Trump exhibited on April 2, the date he called the “Day of Liberation.” In it, dozens of business partners of the United States appeared with the taxes that its president had unilaterally decided to correct what, in their view, have been decades of unfair treatment to Washington by the rest of the countries.
The following week, and after verifying the effect of their aggressive and political volatile in the markets and even in public debt, the republican leader gave a 90 -day truce to allow those countries to reach agreements. That period expired on July 9, but Trump decided to grant a new extension, until August 1. To entertain the wait, and to scare away the comments, which he considers “horrible”, of those who call him taco (acronym for “Trump is always cowed”), decided to send the threatening letters, which he published fulfilled in his social network, Truth.
The EU was one of the few partners who saw the new tariff that awarded them with respect to April. The others were Mexico, which also took 30% for products that are not included in the Free Trade Agreement that shares with the United States and Canada, a country to which it touched 35%. In both cases, the previous tariff was 25%, and for the two countries, the justification was the traffic of fentanil, powerful opioid responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths in recent years.
Although the most striking case was that of Brazil. The Ibero -American country had a “universal” tax of 10% and, most importantly, one of the few commercial scales sanitized with Washington, peroeconomic reasons. With that gesture, Trump intends to influence the course of the coup dictation that is followed against the former ultra -rightist president Jair Bolsonaro. They can fall 43 years, and the president of the United States, a personal friend, considers that everything obeys a “witch hunt.”
In the almost 100 days that have elapsed since Trump set the truce that he skipped, the “90 agreements in 90 days” that the members of their administration promised in the manner of a slogan impossible to comply have not arrived. Actually, they have paid off a non -aggression pact with China and three principles of trade agreements with the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Indonesia. The latter was reached, as announced by the president of the United States, last Monday and incorporates a 19% tariff (compared to 32% consistent in the threat letter), in exchange for the “total opening” of the trade of the first economy of Southeast Asia.
Vietnam’s case deserves separate mention. Trump announced two weeks ago that Hanói Avenia to remove all tariffs on US exports and to pay a universal tax of 20% and another of 40% to products that make transford in the country (in practice, that come from China). This agreement has not transcended any document with details by either party. This Tuesday, Trump told journalists that he did not see necessary to share any document from his trade agreements.
