EU urges US to restore tariff arrangements from last year's trade agreement

Brussels, May 5th (Xinhua) -- The European Commission announced on May 5th that its commissioner in charge of trade and economic security, Malos Shevchovich, has urged the United States to quickly restore the tariff arrangements agreed upon in last year's EU-US trade agreement.

Shevchovich met with US Trade Representative Greer in Paris, France on the same day. The European Commission stated that Shevchovich called for the swift restoration of the agreed terms of the EU-US trade agreement, imposing a 15% tariff on EU exports to the United States and retaining the exceptional arrangements agreed upon with the EU. The European Commission also urges the implementation of the main provisions of the agreement as soon as possible before the one-year anniversary of its signing at the end of July.

In February of this year, the US Supreme Court ruled that the "equivalent tariffs" imposed by the Trump administration on global imports were illegal. To replace the tariffs that were ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court, the Trump administration subsequently imposed a 15% tariff on goods from all countries and regions. Reuters reported that in some cases, EU goods face US tariffs exceeding 15%.

US President Trump recently threatened to raise tariffs on EU cars and trucks to 25%, citing the EU's failure to comply with the terms of the EU-US trade agreement. Reuters said that this is currently one of the main concerns of the European Union, and Shevchovic and Greer had a one-and-a-half-hour discussion on the most urgent aspects of the trade agreement that day.

The European Commission said that Shevchovic informed Greer of the EU's schedule for when it plans to lift tariffs on imported US industrial products. This is one of the contents of the bilateral trade agreement, and Reuters believes that this measure is unlikely to be implemented before June.