By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. will revert to higher tariffs on European Union goods if Brussels fails to implement trade deal commitments before a July 4 deadline, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Friday.
Greer, speaking on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” program, said he spoke with trade officials from different European countries and the EU during a visit to Europe this week and believed “their minds are focused” on making the needed changes.
“They have told me they’re committed to compliance. We hope that’s the case, but we’re watching very closely. And if it’s not the case, then the U.S. will go back to its other tariff structure for the EU,” he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would give the EU until July 4 to keep its side of a trade deal reached in Scotland last July before he raises tariffs on EU goods, including cars, to “much higher levels.” Trump had earlier threatened to increase tariffs on EU cars and trucks to 25% from the previously agreed 15%, starting this week.
Trump’s comments defused tensions with the EU over the trade issue, but the two sides remain at odds over the war in the Middle East and the U.S. president’s irritation that NATO allies have refused to directly engage in the conflict.
Various developments, including Trump’s demand to acquire Greenland and a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the tariffs that prompted the trade negotiations in the first place, had slowed the European Parliament’s implementation of the deal.
Greer said the EU had pledged last year to reduce all of its industrial tariffs to zero for the U.S., provide duty-free access on certain agricultural goods, and revise a variety of non-tariff barriers and burdensome regulations.
“We haven’t seen any of those things come to fruition,” he said. “Seven, eight months later, the EU has not actually implemented any single part of their trade deal obligations,” he said, adding that Washington had kept its part of the bargain by adjusting its tariffs.
“So at some point you have to say, well, if the EU is not in compliance, we’ll wait to be in compliance until they are as well.”
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Lawder; Editing by Paul Simao)
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