Bloc’s leaders also promise to protect EU interests after US president announces escalation in aggressive trade policy

Summary

The EU and its leaders warned of swift retaliation if Donald Trump enacts new 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, as he announced over the weekend.

The European Commission criticized the move as “unjustified” and vowed to protect EU businesses.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron pledged countermeasures, with Macron warning tariffs would also hurt the U.S.

The UK government said it was monitoring developments, while UK Steel called the potential tariffs “devastating.” The EU previously responded to Trump-era tariffs with retaliatory measures.

  • farcaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    19 hours ago

    Tariffs are from what I’ve read, according to economists anyway, a lose-lose for both parties. They’re apparently useful only for obvious things like targeted protection of specific vulnerable domestic industries. I cant begin to understand what Trump is even trying to accomplish here. Blanket tariffs seem just self-destructive.

    • trollbearpig@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      4 hours ago

      There are 2 things they are trying to do here IMO:

      • They are using tariffs to bully weaker countries into worse deals and to interfere in our politics. Here in Colombia the media (all right wing lapdogs) keep talking how president Petro needs to bend the knee and just acept whatever Trump wants to do because it would be so bad for Colombia if we get extra tariffs. And they keep spewing propaganda making it sound like Petro is the one being crazy to kill any remaining support he has (not that he needs any help jajajaja, he has been a really mediocre president on his own and the extreme right is going to get an easy win next election anyway). They are not wrong of course, a trade war between Colombia and USA would hurt Colombia so much more than the USA just because of the relative size of our economies. And Trump and the rest of the republican assholes are using this to bully us and the rest of latin american countries.
      • They want to reshape the tax collection in USA to remove taxes from rich people and collect more from poor people. At the end of the day, blanket tariffs on all products is just another regressive sales tax that will fall mostly on poor people. They want to reduce wealth taxes and income taxes which are collected mostly on rich people and instead replace them with regressive taxes like tariffs instead. I mean, his recemt tax changes shifted a huge amount of the tax burden away from the rich and to the poor and middle classes. If you want to put a conspiracy hat, they also think this will create a population boom in the USA. Research shows that people under worse economic conditions have more children, so they want to make life harder to poor people to get more and cheaper workers. At the very least the Musk rat has spoken openly about this, so it’s not crazy to think this is part of their stupid plan.

      Long term, the USA is royally fucked because of this. They are killing any good will the USA has with the rest of the world and they are screwing the poor people that actully generate the wealth of their country. But short term rich people will make bank with all this and the rest of us will pay for it.

    • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      10 hours ago

      He’s doing the equivalent of robbing a bank while wearing a suicide bomb vest. The only difference is that he’s threatening the world economy instead.

      The fact that he hasn’t thought through the consequence chain afterwards is just him being stupid. Akin to a robber trying to pay the stolen money into his bank account, at the branch he robbed a few days before.