The European Union has asked the United States to suspend billions of dollars in import duties on each other’s products for six months. The European Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis said this to the German magazine on Saturday The mirror. In doing so, Brussels would like to go further than a four-month tax break agreed last month.
The superpowers seem to be finally coming together in a conflict over illegal state aid to aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus, which has been going on for some seventeen years. “We have proposed to suspend all mutual tariffs for six months in order to reach a negotiated solution,” said Dombrovskis. The suspension allows both parties to focus on resolving the long-term dispute.
Washington previously accused European countries of secretly supporting Airbus with favorable loans. The EU, in turn, felt that Boeing was being helped with advantageous tax rules. In response to the dispute, additional trade tariffs were imposed on both sides.
In November, Brussels imposed import tariffs on American products worth about 4 billion dollars (3.36 billion euros). The previous US administration, headed by President Donald Trump, had previously set tariffs on $ 7.5 billion worth of European products, including cheese, olives and whiskey. The European luxury group Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH), known from Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot and Dom Pérignon, and Microsoft were particularly affected by the tariffs.
The levies have had no major consequences for the Dutch economy, business organizations VNO-NCW and MKB-Nederland stated last month. It is important for the Dutch business community that the economic superpowers normalize trade relations.
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