The EU says that she is “prepared” to give a “firm and proportionate response” to the new Trump tariffs to cars

The European Union is “prepared” to respond in a “firm, proportionate and calibrated” way to the new 25% tariffs that Donald Trump will impose from April 2 to all vehicles that are not manufactured in the US. That is a blow to the European car industry, especially in countries such as Germany or Italy, at a time when it was already in low hours.

“The United States measures are completely in the wrong direction,” said the spokesman for the European Commission, Olof Gill, in a press conference in which he explained, in line with the statement issued last night by Ursula von der Leyen, that the new scenario will be taken into account when responding to the set of tariff measures that Washington has imposed.

The German car industry has asked the European Union on Thursday to negotiate with Trump. This industry is very important in Germany and considers that 25 % US tariffs on light commercial cars and vehicles are “a significant burden” for companies and their global supply chains, reports the EFE agency. Precisely in search of a “dialogue solution” is the European Commission without being very successful for the moment.

Brussels delayed a few days the reactory of a part of the rates with which he intended to respond to aluminum and steel tariffs. In that package, valued at 8,000 million euros, products such as LEVI’s jeans, Harley Davinson motorcycles or the Bourbon whiskey, among others, were included and was planned to enter into force on April 1. Without Emabgo, it will wait until April 12 to give the complete response from the draft of products raised by the European Commission to reach the 26,000 million euros that it estimates that it will mean the damage inflicted by the US.

With that margin, the community government intended to give time to negotiation with the US, on the one hand. This week the Commissioner of Commerce, Maros Sefcovic, traveled to Washington to maintain a second meeting with the Trump administration and admitted that there was work ahead. On the other hand, the European Commission won time for negotiation within the EU since the US president threatened to impose a 200% rate on wine, champagne and European alcoholic beverages if he keeps the whiskey tariff. That warning made alarms jump in countries like France. The European Commission will present a package for the protection of the wine sector on Friday.

Now the community government will have to evaluate with the Member States the response to the new tariffs announced by Trump to the vehicles, although the competition in commercial matters corresponds to Brussels and revoke its decision requires a large majority of governments. “The final list of products that we will propose will be a ben selected to cause the maximum impact and minimize it here in the EU,” said the spokesman. “As my three -year -old son would say: they started,” Gill added, convinced that the commercial war will also be invoiced to the US.