Donald Trump has threatened to impose US tariffs on $11bn (£8.4bn) of goods from the EU, raising the stakes in the transatlantic trade dispute between the world’s two largest economic superpowers.
The Trump administration announced the additional levies on EU goods – including roquefort and stilton cheese, wine and aircraft parts – as a response to subsidies for Airbus, the European aerospace and defence group, which it said were harmful to the US.
The latest threat by the White House to slap higher import tariffs on a major trading partner comes after a long-running dispute between the US and the EU over their state subsidy support for Airbus and Boeing, the world’s two biggest civil aerospace firms.
The tit-for-tat battle stretches back almost 15 years, with both sides arguing their case at the World Trade Organization, the global arbiter of trading disputes, to set the size of any appropriate countermeasures to state subsidies.
Trump tweeted on Tuesday complaining about the tariffs.
The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has adversely impacted the United States, which will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products! The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 9, 2019
The Trump administration released a 14-page list of EU goods that could attract a higher tariff, including several symbolic targets such as “French cheese”, roquefort cheese, wine, champagne, olive oil and seafood such as oysters.
Airbus said it saw no legal basis for the US to slap tariffs on EU goods. An Airbus spokesman said it had taken measures to comply with “relatively minor” outstanding requirements required by the WTO and that US talk of $11bn worth of damage from EU subsidies to Airbus was excessive.
EU officials have also started to prepare retaliatory measures in relation to subsidies given to Boeing by the US government, according to Reuters.
The dispute comes at an increasingly delicate time for world trade, which is slowing in part because of concerns over Trump’s protectionist policies. Washington has placed tariffs of 10% on $200bn of Chinese imports in a dispute with Beijing, although the two sides are due to resume talks to agree a deal later this month.
There are also fears the US could impose tariffs on EU cars, which would have a far greater impact on the European economy at a time when growth is already slowing in the eurozone.
