Washington: US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from anywhere in the world went into effect on Wednesday morning drawing swift retaliatory levies from the European Union and Canada.
Trump had reinstated from his first term a 25 per cent tariff on steel and an elevated rate of 25 per cent on aluminium, going up from 15 per cent.
Unlike the first term though, no country has been exempted from these levies.
Earlier this month, Trump had hit Canada, Mexico, and China with separate tariff hikes as punishment for allowing illegal migrants to pass through their borders (not China) and fentanyl, an addictive opioid. A third set of hikes is expected in April under Trump’s reciprocal taxation system.
The EU has said it has targeted $28 billion worth of imports from the US, which is about the same as the estimated worth of the EU’s steel and aluminium exports to the US that will be impacted by the hikes. These EU hikes will come in two stages. In the first, retaliatory tariffs were announced in response to Trump’s first-term levies. The EU had suspended these hikes during President Joe Biden’s term, and that suspension will be allowed to lapse in April. Also in this stage are new tariffs targeting boats, bourbon, and motorcycles. The second stage will come after two weeks.
At the same time, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, which is the executive branch of the European Union, told reporters she had told her officials to resume trade talks with US officials. “We firmly believe that in a world fraught with geo-economic and political uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with such tariffs”.
Canada, which is the biggest foreign supplier of steel and aluminium to the US, will slap retaliatory tariffs on $29.8 billion (Canadian dollars) from Wednesday.
There has been no response from the White House to the EU hikes, but Trump had in general threatened to come back with even heavier hikes to retaliatory actions by trading partners.
(IANS)
