A tariff war between the EU and the US is threatening to buckle one of Greece’s most buoyant export sectors, which survived a decade of economic crises, but possibly not US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration’s decision to impose an additional 25 percent tariff on a range of EU products in retaliation for EU aircraft subsidies, hits products from Scotch to Italian cheeses and French wines.
In Greece, its prized canned peach.
Photo: Reuters
Greece is the world’s biggest exporter of tinned peaches with about one-fifth of its 250,000 tonnes annual production absorbed by the US market.
Formerly subject to an import levy of 18 percent, the new tariffs — part of WTO-authorized countermeasures to Airbus subsidies — would increase the total import duty to the US to 43 percent.
The people of northern Greece are not impressed.
“Trump would do well to behave himself and let us get to work so we can have a livelihood,” peach farmer Tasos Halkidis said. “We don’t want this tariff business.”
The fertile plain straddling the regions of Imathia and Pella in central Macedonia is one massive peach orchard. A sea of pink greets visitors in the spring, when the peaches are in bloom.
Standing in a huge warehouse piled high with millions of aluminum cans, 63-year-old Kostas Apostolou, head of the Greek Canners Association, said the dispute is threatening their livelihood and would potentially shut them out of their biggest market.
“Why are they punishing us?” Apostolou said.
The increase in tariffs came into effect on Oct. 18, just as Greeks readied to ship 50 million tins to US markets.
Many customers there — mainly catering companies that supply hospitals, schools and the military — have either canceled orders or have said they would not be prepared to pay for any tariff increase, producers said.
“Suddenly there was this [trade] war... We could never imagine that this could affect our jobs here in this small area,” Apostolou said.
Stuck with excess supply, producers are also uncomfortably aware how their production lines are tailored to the US market. The sector is saddled with 3kg tins aimed at the US, which cannot be sold in Europe, Asia or Latin America where 1kg tins are dispatched.
The Canners Association and other industry experts estimated the loss of income from the US market at about US$50 million — a small amount in terms of international trade, but vital for one of the poorer regions in Greece, with unemployment at 20 percent.
They are worried that resulting excess product would lead to a collapse in prices and unemployment would jump.
The heart of Greek peach country is planted with millions of trees in an area of more than 20,000 hectares.
About 10,000 small farms and 10,000 employees work for 17 can factories in the area, with the peach crop giving life to the wider Imathia and Pella regions.
“It’s a shock,” said Eleftherios Saitis, who built one of the first can factories in the early 1970s.
The sector is already reeling from the impact of a Russian embargo on the EU fruit and vegetable sector imposed in 2014. Farmers worry this might be the final blow.
“Now with the tariffs from the United States, it will be a very big hit, it will be a catastrophe,” Halkidis said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to