Brussels Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic is set to meet U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at a gathering in Paris on Wednesday.
The European Union said on Monday it would make a strong case for tariff cuts with the United States this week, while also readying countermeasures should a deal be unreachable.
A spokesperson for the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch, the European Commission, which oversees trade policy, said it was prioritizing negotiations, days after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would double import duties on steel and aluminum from 25 percent to 50 percent.
“We don’t want to go down the route of tariffs. Rather than having them increase, we want to decrease or even where possible, eliminate them,” the commission’s trade spokesperson, Olof Gill, told a press conference in Brussels.
“That remains the case. That remains our priority. We will be making that case strongly, both at [a] technical and political level, this week.”
Gill said that if negotiations fail, “then we are also prepared to accelerate our work on the defensive side.”
“In the event that our negotiations do not lead to a balanced outcome, the EU is prepared to impose countermeasures, including in response to this latest tariff increase,” he said.
Gill said the EU is in the process of finalizing an “expanded list of countermeasures” that would “automatically take effect on July 14 or earlier.”
July 14 is when the 90-day pause on tariffs that Trump announced earlier this year comes to an end.
Last month, the EU proposed countermeasures on up to $107.2 billion (95 billion euros) worth of American imports if negotiations with Washington fail to remove the tariffs.
The new measures, if approved, would target American wine, fish, aircraft, cars and car parts, chemicals, electrical equipment, health products, and machinery.
A public consultation is currently ongoing for EU member states and businesses to react to the proposals from the commission. The consultation will end on June 10.
After that, the commission will make a final decision on whether to impose countermeasures and what those countermeasures should be.
By Guy Birchall
