News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
The European Union has agreed not to proceed with a second tranche of retaliatory import duties on United States imports on 1st of June as originally planned in order to leave room for further negotiations with the United States. The duty enactment could be deferred for up to six months.
There are timid signs of a gradual Washington ‘awakening’ to trade files that the European Union would want to settle with Washington to move on on trade.
The countdown for a second round of European retaliatory tariffs in response to United Sates tariffs on steel and aluminium from the European Union and the ex-EU member United Kingdom is now clearly on.
United States-European Union political relations have seen a noticeable improvement since Joe Biden took over at the White House in Washington. Discussions are intense in the area of climate change and on security – not least on international sanctions. On the trade policy front there was one US gesture that …
New United States proposals on minimum corporation tax and digital sales are a welcome return to multilateralism, but Washington’s priority seems to be delivering domestic results rather than international cooperation. This remains a challenge to which the European Union and the United Kingdom now have to respond.
To divert a phrase by former US Ambassador to the EU Anthony Garner: last week-end the United States Trade Representative defused some hand grenades, but kept some ticking.
It’s been one of those mega-weeks in trade again, culminating perhaps with Joe Biden beaming into the European Council last night to say hello. Nothing concrete came out of this meeting. Official statements indicate this was mostly about bonding and setting lofty common goals such as working together on COVID-19 …
The US and EU are talking again on critical trade files, but dialogue is picking up in a piecemeal way.
It’s been an eventful one and a half days on the foreign policy front – with significant implications for EU trade policy Here a little ‘quick and dirty’ update on where things stand. Airbus and steel and aluminium disputes on the immediate agenda of EU & US New USTR Katherine …
The countdown to a negotiated transatlantic Airbus-Boeing subsidy solution has begun today. Last Friday US President Joe Biden and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a mutual four-month temporary suspension of tariffs imposed in 2020 following a 16-year old legal dispute at the World Trade Organization: these tariff …
