The EU will stand up for itself if its interests are targeted, Emmanuel Macron has said, as the bloc’s leaders urged talks but a firm response if needed to Donald Trump’s weekend threat to impose punishing tariffs,
The Guardian reports.
“If our commercial interests are attacked, Europe, as a true power, will have to make itself respected and therefore react,” the French president said as he arrived for an informal defence meeting with other leaders in Brussels on Monday.
The latest “choices and statements” by the new US president’s administration were “pushing the EU to be more united and more active to respond to issues of collective security”, he said.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said the EU was strong enough to react to any US trade levies but “the goal should be that things result in cooperation”. The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said there would be “no winners in a trade war”.
Europe and the US needed each other, she said, while the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said a trade war was “a complete mistake” and everything possible must be done to stop allies fighting “in the face of a Russian threat or Chinese expansion”.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said Copenhagen would generally “never support fighting allies”, but “[if the Trump administration imposed] tough tariffs on Europe, we need a collective and robust response”.
Trump imposed swingeing tariffs on goods imported from Canada, Mexico and China on Saturday, sparking retaliation from all three countries. He said on Sunday night that new tariffs on the EU would “definitely happen”.
