The European Union is reportedly seeking to put pressure specifically on Republican-controlled states as it enacts so-called retaliatory tariff measures on American businesses amid the trade war with the Trump administration.
As an order from U.S. President Donald Trump to impose global 25 per cent tariffs on aluminium and steel products, which are expected to impact an estimated €26 ($28) billion worth of EU exports to America, Brussels announced on Wednesday a package of countermeasures covering about the same in American exports to the bloc.
According to the Associated Press, EU officials admitted that their tariffs would be “aimed at products made in Republican-held states,” including meat produced in Kansas and Nebraska and lumber products from Alabama and Georgia. The bloc will also impose levies against American bourbon whiskey and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
While President Trump is not up for re-election and, therefore, does not need to worry about personal political ramifications, Brussels appears to be banking that impacted local Republican politicians and lawmakers in Washington, many of whom will face re-election next year, will put pressure on the White House to back down.
Announcing the measures, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “We deeply regret this measure. Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and even worse for consumers. These tariffs are disrupting supply chains. They bring uncertainty for the economy.”
“Jobs are at stake. Prices will go up. In Europe and in the United States.”
It comes as Eurostat revealed that under the final year of the Biden presidency, America’s trade imbalance with the EU rose to €198.2 ($216.2) billion, up from €155.8 ($170) billion in 2023.
President Trump has argued that tariffs, in conjunction with tax cuts and deregulation, will play a critical role in reshoring industries back to the United States after previous decades of globalisation have seen communities across America devastated as corporations fled to cheap labour regions in Asia, South America, and elsewhere with little to no financial repercussions from Washington.
In the first month of his second term in the White House, Trump has pointed to companies such as Apple, Honda, Oracle, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) investing hundreds of billions of dollars into increasing production in the United States to avoid tariffs as evidence of the effectiveness of his strategy.
While the Europeans have attempted to cast their measures as “retaliatory” to Trump’s tariffs, it would be more accurate to describe Trump’s tariffs as being retaliatory to longstanding tariffs and other trade barriers imposed on American goods by Brussels to protect its internal single market from competition from U.S. companies.
“We have massive deficits with the EU… They don’t take our farm product, they don’t take our cars… How many Chevrolets or Fords do you see in the middle of Munich? The answer is none. The EU has abused the United States for years, and they can’t do that,” Trump remarked last month.
In addition to incentivising companies to bring production to America, the Trump administration’s tariff strategy also appears to have geopolitical aims, namely to see supposed allies such as the European Union decrease their dependencies on antagonistic states such as Communist China—Europe’s top importer—and Putin’s Russia, long one of the bloc’s top energy suppliers.
Following Trump’s election victory in November, EU Chief von der Leyen suggested that the bloc could replace Russian gas imports — which outweighed the money the EU spent on funding Ukraine last year — with American Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) to redress the large trade imbalance with the United States.
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