Europe will not hesitate to retaliate if Donald Trump imposes any new tariffs, the European Commission and EU national leaders have said, after the US president announced another escalation of his aggressive trade policy at the weekend.
Trump said he would announce on Monday 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports that would affect “everybody”, adding that reciprocal tariffs on all countries that tax imports from the US would follow on Tuesday or Wednesday.
The European Commission said on Monday it would respond to protect EU interests, but had not so far received any official notification of additional US tariffs on EU goods and would not react to “broad announcements” without details or written clarification.
“The EU sees no justification for the imposition of tariffs on its exports. We will react to protect the interests of European businesses, workers and consumers from unjustified measures,” the bloc’s executive body said.
In general, the imposition of tariffs “would be unlawful and economically counterproductive”, it said, adding: “Tariffs are essentially taxes. By imposing tariffs, the US would be taxing its own citizens, raising costs for business, and fuelling inflation.”
A European Commission spokesperson later added that the reciprocal tariffs Washington was proposing were also unjustified. “We believe that none of the potential measures outlined by the US administration to date are justified,” they said.
Trump’s move, if carried out, would mirror his action in his first term when he imposed 25% tariffs on steel from many countries as well as 10% tariffs on aluminium. For the EU, that covered about €6.4bn (£5.3bn) worth of exports.
The bloc responded then with tariffs on €2.8bn of US goods including Harley-Davidson motorcycles, bourbon whiskey and denim jeans. Plans to apply tariffs to a further €3.6bn of US goods after three years were dropped when Joe Biden was elected president.
Canada and Mexico – which Trump has already threatened with tariffs – are the biggest steel exporters to the US along with Brazil, according to US trade data. South Korea is also big steel providers. It is estimated that about 25% of European steel exports go to the US.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, echoed the European Commission’s words on Monday, saying that since nothing is yet official “we can only say with great caution but great clarity: anyone who imposes tariffs must expect counter-tariffs”.
On Sunday night, Scholz said during an election debate with his probable successor as chancellor, Friedrich Merz, that Germany would suffer particularly heavily from new tariffs but EU was “prepared” to respond and “ready to act within one hour”.
Trump has long complained about the EU’s 10% tariffs on imports of US vehicles being much higher than the America levy of 2.5% on cars from the bloc, frequently observing that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions of its vehicles – many of them German – to the US every year.
Scholz’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, also said on Monday that the EU was ready to respond. “Europe must and can only react unitedly and decisively to unilateral trade restrictions. And we are prepared for this,” Habeck said.
France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said on Monday that the EU would counter in kind against any new tariffs imposed by the US. “There is no hesitation when it comes to defending our interests,” he told TF1 television.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, warned in an interview with CNN broadcast on Sunday that he was willing to go “head-to-head” on tariffs with his US counterpart. “I already did so, and I will did [sic] it again,” Macron said.
He added that tariffs would not only harm European economies but also the US. “It means if you put tariffs on a lot of sectors, it will increase the costs and create inflation in the US. Is it what your people want? I’m not so sure,” Macron said.
A spokesperson for the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the British government had not seen details of Trump’s proposed steel and aluminium tariffs and would continue to engage with the US administration as appropriate.
They said it was not possible to speculate on the impact of tariffs without seeing details, but Britain was prepared for all developments. The industry body UK Steel said any tariffs would be a “devastating blow” to the sector.
The UK exports about 200,000 tonnes of steel a year to the US, worth more than £400m. EU steel exports to the US, which have been worth about €3bn a year over the past decade, have totalled about 2.2 m tonnes annually over the past five years,
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