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What a challenging week for the EU-US relationship.
On Saturday night, President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on eight European countries including the UK and Norway opposed to his bid to take control of Greenland, a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. The threat, later dropped on Wednesday after a conversation between Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, sparked discussion in the EU over the possibility of using one of its strictest trade measures, the anti-coercion instrument.
To discuss these and more developments in the EU this week, Euronews’ weekly podcast Brussels, My Love?talked to Peggy Corlin, Euronews’ trade correspondent, Eoin Drea, from the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, and Stefan Grobe, Euronews’ political reporter.
The EU-US relationship under threat
The latest developments in the transatlantic relationship show how “tariffs can be weaponised,” Corlin explained on the podcast after a busy week of reporting.
Whether Trump’s decision to take a step back on his tariff threat was motivated by fears of the EU using the trade bazooka or by political calculation is difficult to tell, according to Eoin Drea.
Yet one thing cannot be forgotten, Grobe said: Trump’s plan to impose tariffs exclusively on a slew of European countries, while these (excluding the United Kingdom) are part of the EU’s single market, would have been complicated to implement.
Threat of US tariffs or not, the three guests agreed that the EU should not react exclusively to US actions, but should instead focus on its own strategy.
A freeze of the Mercosur deal
In terms of action, an important step would be the EU-Mercosur trade agreement, according to Drea. “It’s a good signal to the world about what geopolitical bloc we want to be,” the economics expert said.
The EU-Mercosur trade deal, set to create a free trade area between the EU, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, was signed last Saturday after 25 years of talks.
However, on Wednesday, the European Parliament voted to refer the agreement to the EU Court of Justice, a move that could delay the deal by one or two years, as Corlin explained.
Additional sources • Georgios Leivaditis, sound edtor and mixer.
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