The EU has finalized a second list of countermeasures to target US goods worth 72 billion euros (US$84.12 billion), including Boeing Co aircraft, automobiles and bourbon if it decides to retaliate as transatlantic trade tensions intensify.
The additional duties would also be slapped on machinery products, chemicals and plastics, medical devices, electrical equipment, wines and other agricultural goods, according to a 206-page list prepared by the European Commission and seen by Bloomberg News.
The list, initially hitting US goods totaling 95 billion euros, was cut down after consultations with companies and member states. Countries must give their approval before the list’s adoption.
Photo: AFP
The suite of measures represents the EU’s response to US President Donald Trump’s earlier “reciprocal” tariff of 20 percent hitting most goods and the additional levies on cars and auto parts of 25 percent. The universal rate was later temporarily lowered to 10 percent to allow for negotiations.
The list, which was reported earlier by Politico, does not include a tariff rate for the goods.
Over the weekend, Trump said he would raise EU tariffs to 30 percent on Aug. 1, which EU Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic called “effectively prohibitive” to transatlantic trade.
EU trade ministers met in Brussels on Monday to discuss next steps. Sefcovic was to speak with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick late on Monday to continue negotiations that the EU said must be mutually beneficial to both sides.
Over the weekend, the EU announced it was set to extend a suspension of tariffs on a first list of 21 billion euros of US products in response to additional steel and aluminum tariffs from Trump.
Separately, the US government withdrew from a longstanding trade agreement with Mexico governing tomato imports and would push forward with a new tariff of just more than 17 percent, the US Department of Commerce announced on Monday.
The move came just days after Trump announced plans to impose a 30 percent tariff, starting on Aug. 1, on many Mexican products that do not fall under the US-Mexico-Canada agreement he negotiated in his first term.
“Mexico remains one of our greatest allies, but for far too long our farmers have been crushed by unfair trade practices that undercut pricing on produce like tomatoes. That ends today,” Lutnick said in a statement. “This rule change is in line with President Trump’s trade policies and approach with Mexico.”
A Mexican government statement posted on social media sharply disagreed with Lutnick, describing the US levy as politicized and “unfair.”
The joint statement from Mexico’s agriculture and economy ministries added that market share won by Mexican tomato farmers is due to “the quality of the product, and not any unfair practice.”
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS