French trade minister flags defensive trade tools for Trump presidency

New trade defence measures are ready for use should Europe’s relations with the US deteriorate following Donald Trump’s return to the White House, France’s trade minister said before a meeting of EU trade ministers in Brussels.

 “We don’t want to escalate to trade war, however Europe must also be ready to show its strength and use its new tools of protection,” said French trade minister Sophie Primas on arrival at the meeting.

The meeting was the first such trade discussion among ministers since president-elect Trump won the US election on a platform which included threats to slap 20% tariffs on all goods arriving from the EU to the US.

One such new trade measure in the EU armoury, according to an official of the European Union Council, is the anti-coercion regulation adopted in 2023 to protect the EU from duress from third countries.

If dialogue with the Trump administration fails, the regulation includes tariffs, quotas, licence, restrictions on the right to participate in public procurement tender procedures, measures reducing access by foreign investors to the EU or access by banking and insurance entities to EU capital markets.

“The European Commission received a clear mandate from the ministers to engage with the new US administration on a positive agenda, while being prepared to flank this positive agenda with concrete countermeasures ready to use if and when necessary,” an EU diplomat told Euronews after the meeting.

During his first mandate, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium, while the EU retaliated with targeted tariffs on US goods including Harley Davidson motorcycles and Bourbon whisky.

In October 2021, Brussels and the Biden administration agreed  to resolve the dispute over aluminium and steel, and at the end of last year they extended the truce for a further 15 months, preventing tariffs on trans-Atlantic trade worth billions of euros from kicking in automatically on January 1. But that tariff suspension deal is only set to last until shortly after the next US administration takes office.