EU May Retaliate if US imposes Car Import tariffs
The European Union(EU) says it is already preparing measures to retaliate against the U.S. if President Donald Trump imposes tariffs on imported cars and auto parts.
EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said Thursday that the 28-nation bloc would be forced to impose more “rebalancing measures” if Trump escalates trade tensions with the auto tariffs.
They would come on top of tariffs the U.S. put on steel and aluminum imports, which the EU responded to with duties on U.S. products.
Malmstrom said: “If the U.S. would impose these car tariffs that would be very unfortunate.” She said the EU was preparing “a list of rebalancing measures there as well. And this we have made clear to our American partners.”
Malmstrom and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will visit Trump next week.
Donald Trump will put a “tax on the American people” if he goes ahead with a threat to hit European carmakers with punitive tariffs, the European Union has warned.
In a hard-hitting paper, the European commission said Trump’s tariffs would be “self-defeating and would weaken the US economy”, estimating that almost $300bn (£228bn) worth of US goods could be hit by countermeasures.
The warning comes in the commission’s first detailed response to the US department of commerce following Trump’s threat to hit imports of European cars with tariffs.
“The European Union is possibly as bad as China, only smaller,” the US president told Fox News on Sunday. “They send a Mercedes in, we can’t send our cars in,” he claimed.
The EU imposes a 10% tariff on US-built cars, while the US levies a 2.5% tariff on cars assembled in Europe and a 25% tariff on European-built vans and pick-up trucks.

The US leader promised to unleash tariffs on European car imports after the EU retaliated against his tariffs on steel and aluminum, sparking fears of a trade war that pushed stock markets around the world into the red on Monday.
In a sign of the EU’s deepening alarm about Trump’s unilateral approach, the paper argues that the White House is again risking the US’s international reputation.
“The European Union would therefore caution the United States against pursuing a process which could result in yet another disregard of international law, which would damage further the reputation of the United States and which the international community cannot and will not accept.”
EU leaders who met the US president at a tense G7 summit in Canada were rattled by Trump’s disregard for the post-1945 world order, his mocking tone and bellicose rhetoric.
That summit did lead to an invitation from the White House to Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, to visit Washington. Juncker is due to meet Trump in Washington before the end of July, a Brussels spokesman confirmed on Monday.