Just hours after the U.S. and China agreed to a phase one trade deal, CNBC reported that U.S. trade officials are considering hitting a raft of EU goods—like whisky, Cognac, cheeses and more—with 100% tariffs.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) published on Thursday a list of hundreds of goods that, in addition to the liquor and cheeses, includes wine and different types of meat and seafood as well as nonmilitary helicopters.
According to CNBC, the new tariffs are being weighed in response to fallout over Airbus, which the U.S. has long argued receives subsidies that hurts American aircraft maker Boeing, a competitor.
In October the U.S. imposed 10% tariffs on large civil aircraft and 25% on agricultural goods from Europe, and Thursday’s proposed tariffs would increase the previous rates to 100% and add new ones.
The USTR told CNBC that because the EU has not reined in the Airbus subsidies, “the United States is initiating a process to assess increasing the tariff rates and subjecting additional EU products to the tariffs.”
Key background: President Trump threatened on December 4 to slap France with 100% tariffs, a retaliatory move over the European country’s 3% digital tax. The tax, aimed at big, mostly American tech companies like Amazon and Facebook, is seen by the USTR as discriminatory. And although a phase one trade deal is in place with China (which Trump trumpeted as “amazing”) a few things remain uncertain. Namely, it’s unclear if China will actually purchase the $50 billion of U.S. agricultural goods Trump requested, and one economist said the deal is not as big a win as both sides are claiming.
Reference: Forbes
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