The EU has offered the United States a “zero-for-zero” tariff scheme, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday, seeking to avoid a tit-for-tat trade war,
Politico reports.
“We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods as we have successfully done with many other trading partners. Because Europe is always ready for a good deal. So we keep it on the table,” she told a press conference alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
The U.S. and EU came close to scrapping industrial tariffs a decade ago in their discussions of the TTIP — the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership — that was ultimately scuppered by Trump in his first term.
Removing tariffs on industrial products such as cars and chemicals was not seen as controversial at the time — agricultural products and safety standards were a much hotter potato.
Von der Leyen’s renewed offer comes after Trump last week slapped 20 percent tariffs on the EU and a slew of other trade partners, hiking U.S. trade barriers to their highest in more than a century.
Trump’s trade war has caused investors to panic, with financial markets across the world losing trillions of dollars or euros in value. European stocks suffered their biggest one-day falls since the start of the Covid pandemic on Monday.
Amid the market turmoil, von der Leyen sought to project calm.
“We stand ready to negotiate with the U.S.,” she said.
The EU charges average tariffs of just 1.6 percent on U.S. non-agricultural products, on a trade-weighted basis. But it does charge a higher tariff of 10 percent on imported American cars — although the U.S. is the only G7 country that still pays it because TTIP wasn’t concluded.
