Faced with an impasse in negotiations between the EU and the U.S., Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced in January their desire to relaunch a new transatlantic trade route and conclude a trade agreement in the near future.
“Europe treats us very badly,” Trump said today, before an audience of state governors at the White House, complaining about “a huge‘ deficit ‘”in relations with Brussels” for the past 10 or 12 years. “
This is not the first time that Trump has complained about what he considers to be an imbalance in trade relations between the US and the EU, having recently threatened to impose additional tariffs on European imports in the automotive sector in retaliation for European Commission measures against US companies. American.
Today, the President of the USA added that the EU has imposed “incredible customs barriers” and asked community members to further open markets for American products, especially in the agricultural area.
At his meeting with Von der Leyen in January, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Trump said these difficulties were driving a new trade agreement between the two blocs, saying he would like to finalize it quickly.
Today, the American President explained that the delay in the negotiations is due to the fact that he concentrated primarily on trade relations with China, Japan and South Korea.
Since the beginning of the year, the European Commissioner for Trade, Irish Phil Hogan, has been in Washington twice, to meet with his American counterpart, Robert Lightizer, trying to find solutions to the impasse.
Von der Leyen is also due to go to Washington soon, for a meeting that could lead to the signing of a kind of “political declaration”, such as the one concluded in July 2018 between Donald Trump and former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
At the time, the two leaders promised to negotiate two agreements: one aimed at abolishing customs duties on industrial goods, the other at removing certain non-tariff barriers to trade through regulatory cooperation.
Discussions on industrial goods have not progressed since then, but the Americans have already made it known that they would like to include agriculture within the scope of the agreement, which Europeans are opposed to.
The negotiations with Brussels take place at the same time that Trump tries to launch a new trade agreement with the United Kingdom, following Brexit, promising to be a privileged partner of the British.
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