The United States and the European Union have reached an agreement on the import duties that have been introduced back and forth since 2018. US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced this during the G20 summit in Rome.
The deal will allow certain European steel and aluminum products to be imported back into the US free of duties. Conversely, according to Raimondo, the tariffs that the EU had imposed on American products such as jeans from Levi’s, motorcycles from Harley Davidson and whiskey from Kentucky.
The deal comes a month before an important deadline: the EU planned to increase tariffs on US products on December 1.
Resolving the trade conflict can, according to Raimondo, ensure that the economies of the US and the EU can better protect themselves against global overproduction, especially by China.
End of a trade war
The EU’s tariffs on US products were introduced in response to measures taken by then-President Donald Trump. It decided in 2018 to introduce a tax of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum from almost all countries in the world. The Trump administration said it wanted to protect national security.
But with the import duties, Trump also unleashed a trade war with the EU. The then President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, called the charges “unjustified and unacceptable”.
At the beginning of 2020, Sigrid Kaag, then Minister of Foreign Trade, already negotiated with the US about lifting part of the import tariffs. There was then an agreement reached on the import of laminated steel, which meant that some of Tata Steel’s steel production could again be sent to the US free of duties.
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