EU Prepares for Trade Battle with New Tariff Plan Targeting Key US Industries

Brussels moves forward with plan B against US tariffs. The European Union has finally sealed the list of products included in the second package of countermeasures to face the increasingly possible imposition of U.S. tariffs. Valued at €72 billion, categories such as aeronautical products, machinery or automobiles join textiles on the list of U.S. goods that will have to pay a tax on their entry into the Community borders.

These products, which directly target U.S. industry, thus join the first package announced by Brussels at the beginning of March, and which have already reached a value of more than €20 billion. The European Union has justified the selection of products, as it did months ago, under the need to “rebalance” the trade balance in the face of U.S. tariffs.

The other two reasons that have guided the Community Executive, according to the text presented by Brussels to the Foreign and Trade Ministers of the EU-27 and to which different media have had access, are the availability of an alternative source of supply and those in which the risk of delocalization is high.

Brussels has dedicated the second package of countermeasures to the US industry

In total, the two packages would be worth just over 90 billion euros, or one third of European imports to the U.S. The final figure, if approved, would also fall far short of the U.S. government’s planned tariffs on the European Union, which affect up to 70% of EU exports to the powerhouse.

For the time being, however, Brussels is still waiting for negotiations to progress so that tariffs are not applied in either direction. To this end, the European Commissioner for Trade, Maros Sefcovic, continues to discuss with Washington the possibility of eliminating the imposition of a 30% tariff on European products, announced this weekend, which will come into force on August 1.

While the European Union is not the only player on which the United States has already announced it will impose a tariff early next month, this decision does affect the world’s largest trading relationship today. In 2023 alone, bilateral trade between the two powers in goods and services stood at €1.6 trillion.