Following the Phase 1 trade deal with China, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that will shift his attention to Europe, post-Brexit Britain and India. Namely, Trump informed that will force new tariffs, shaking up its relations with the above-mentioned major U.S. trading partners.
According to Reuters, it is likely to happen:
The European Union and Washington will still remain at odds concerning aircraft subsidies, trade barriers, and plans by European countries to impose taxes on digital services.
During this week, Trump renewed threats to impose “Section 232” tariffs of up to 25% on auto imports from the EU, despite the fact that he missed the November’s deadline set by U.S. law to decide on the tariffs.
As the Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Emily Haber said : “The EU will respond to any additional tariffs with duties of its own”.
In exchange for Washington holding off its threat to force tariffs of up to 100% on a $2.4 billion list of French imports, France agreed to suspend a 3% digital tax on U.S. tech companies.
At the same time, Washington has already forced a 25% tariff on European wines and other several goods and also a 10% tariff on aircraft.
In light of the situation, US further threats to increase those tariffs and spread the list of the affected products in case the subsidy problem is not resolved.
With Britain being the 7th-largest trading partner for the U.S., Trump has been promising a “massive” new trade deal with the U.K.
While Mnuchin and Trump threatened to put tariffs on imports from Britain in case it proceeds with the planned digital tax, Britain’s finance minister Sajid Javid noted that it would go towards with the tax this April anyway.
Additionally, Sajid Javid said that a new trade deal with the Europe was Britain’s “first priority” except the deal with the United States.
As for the North America, in the following weeks Trump is expected to ink legislation, which will implement the new United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement.
Moreover, with the U.S. eliminating India’s special trade status under the Generalized System of Preferences back in June, $5.6 billion worth of Indian exports to the United States were affected.
Both of them are in a dispute concerning India’s new digital trade restrictions.
For the records, US and India will focus on these issues during Trump’s expected visit to India in February.
Concluding, Trump and the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have came to a limited trade deal agreement back in September, which cuts the tariffs on U.S. farm goods, Japanese machine tools and other products, deferring a threat of higher U.S. car duties.
The two governments are going to tackle the automotive issue in a second round of discussions and negotiations which is scheduled to start in April 2020.
