Paul Kirby, Bethany Bell, Adam Easton
London, Rome and Warsaw
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American jeans, motorcycles and bourbon imports are hit by EU measures
In Brussels it was just after 6:00 on Wednesday. However, it was midnight in Washington, D.C. that President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum were enforced on major US trading partners.
It took less than 10 minutes for the European Union to respond.
“Taxes are taxes. They are bad for businesses and bad for consumers,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Reyen.
The EU’s first measures will take effect on US products on April 1, from jeans and motorcycles to peanut butter and bourbon, just like the Trump administration’s first tariffs in 2018 and 2020.
But more will come in mid-April. It includes textiles, home appliances, food and agricultural products in full, in response to two weeks of consultation with stakeholders.
A list of items about 100 pages long is circulated, featuring meat, dairy products, fruits, wine and spirit, toilet seats, wood, coats, swimsuits, nighttime, shoes, chandeliers and lawnmowers.
For consumers, prices for European supermarket shelves, especially American products, are high. However, there are real risks in businesses and some industries, especially steel.
Dirk Jandura, the German BGA Federation of Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services, warned that Germans might have to dig deep into their pockets to pay for American products in supermarkets.
Orange juice, bourbon and peanut butter were the products that were most likely to hit. “This cannot be absorbed by businesses because the trade margin is very low,” he said.
In total, the EU will cover 26 billion euros (£22 billion) of US exports.
“We’re not going to enter the hypothesis other than saying we’re enthusiastically preparing for all these outcomes,” said EU spokesman Olov Gill.
EU council president Antonio Costa called on the US to escalate, but there were few signs on Wednesday as Trump vowed to fight back against the EU measures.
“We’ve been abused for a long time, but we’re no longer abused,” he said.
There were concerns about the escalation in Austria as well.
“The United States is the second most important export market for Austrian products after Germany, and is the most important for Germany,” said Christophe Neumeier, head of the Austrian Federation of Industrial Affairs. “It was essential for Europe to act together and act decisively,” he added.
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EU Commission Chairman Ursula von der Leyen responded quickly to US tariffs
One EU official noted that products such as soybeans and orange juice can be easily sourced from Brazil and Argentina, making it less hit by consumers.
And there was a proposal that some of the targeted US exports came from US states under Republican control, either soybeans in Louisiana or meat from Nebraska and Kansas.
A relatively large number of US exports enter the EU through the Netherlands port of Rotterdam or Antwerp, Belgium.
Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Dark Berjartz said no one would stand to benefit from the “customs war,” but he hoped that he would not hit his country’s economy too hard.
One area that is particularly hard hit on both sides of the Atlantic is the drink sector.
Pauline Bastidon of Spirits Europe said that EU and US producers are united and faced by European companies that produced the US spirit and US companies that invested heavily in Europe.
In three years since the previous 25% tariff suspension on American whiskey in the EU, Chris Swanger of the US Distillery Spirits, the US distillery has “worked hard to regain a solid foothold in our biggest export market.”
It was “very unfortunate” to reimpose the tariffs from April 1, and he called for a return to “zero-zero” tariffs.
The outlook for a 25% US import tax is also a major issue for French cognac producers. Most of their produce is due to exports to the US or China.
French producers are already suffering from Chinese measures to tax cognac heavily.
“Morale is in the garbage dump,” Bastian Bursafero, of the General Weingrowers Union, told French information.
Thousands of jobs are at stake in the Challente region alone, he says: “Cognac is a product made for export.”
There was also a disastrous warning from the head of the European Steel Association, Henrik Adam.
“President Trump’s “American first” policy threatens to be the last nail of the European steel industry,” he warned.
Trump’s first tariffs on European steel in 2018 saw EU steel exports to the US fall more than a million tonnes, with two-thirds of that being replaced by the EU for every three tonnes of steel that did not enter the US.
“The impact of US tariffs is likely to be much greater as these new measures imposed by Trump are more widespread.”
