US President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on products from the European Union in retaliation for the bloc’s US$1 billion (€890 million) fine of Alphabet’s Google. The president in a social media post on Friday said the US would launch a trade investigation “into the practice of ‘ROBBING’ American Companies and, in turn, the American Taxpayer”. “The penalties will be entirely reversed and, we anticipate, a substantial TARIFF to be placed on them at the earliest possible moment,” Trump...
The US president says fines against Google, as well as Apple, Meta and Amazon, should be "entirely reversed."
As trade tensions with China reach boiling point, EU officials are ramping up engagement with Beijing in search of an off-ramp. Quietly behind the scenes, though, Europe is preparing for a trade war. In Brussels, a steely determination has set in to ensure the bloc’s manufacturing heartlands are not deindustrialised by the “China Shock 2.0”. With some industries already haemorrhaging jobs, the EU’s resilience-building and de-risking plans are now laced with deterrents as Brussels looks to...
Facing Europe’s ever-widening trade deficit with Beijing, Berlin is increasingly singing the same tune as Paris. The two nations displayed a united front at this year’s Franco-German Ministerial Council, which will soon be put on paper in a joint road map due by September at the request of Germany. “Our work between Germany and France is indispensable at a time when Russia threatens our security, when the People’s Republic of China challenges our economy, and when the transatlantic partnership...
European policymakers have watched Chinese carmakers roll in like a slow but unstoppable tide over the past few years: affordable, polished and threatening one of the continent’s proudest industrial legacies. Many have warned about the dismantling of their automotive prides following the new China shock. A crown jewel of Europe’s industrial output, the automotive sector represents directly and indirectly a total of more than 13 million jobs in the EU. It was no accident that electric vehicles...
The European Union is prepared to introduce emergency measures to combat China’s extraordinary export surge as new figures showed the trade gap had widened dramatically, its top trade enforcer said on Tuesday. Safeguard measures that permit tariffs and quotas to be enforced to combat sudden import surges may “become legitimate on a case-by-case basis”, Denis Redonnet told the European Parliament’s trade committee. Redonnet, the EU’s deputy director general for trade, added that the bloc had...
A heatwave is driving unprecedented demand for Chinese air conditioners in Europe, just as Brussels seeks to narrow its record trade deficit with China through new restrictions. Observers said this exposed a glaring contradiction between public demand and political rhetoric, adding that the European Union was shifting blame for the trade deficit instead of addressing its own structural shortcomings. The record-breaking heatwave has disrupted transit infrastructure, triggered droughts and led to...
The European Commission has been clearly signalling its intention to wage a trade war against China. Brussels’ intent to counter the so-called China shock 2.0 – the wave of subsidised Chinese exports such as electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels and batteries – is no longer merely a verbal threat but appears to be an imminent decision. Comparing current trade tensions between the European Union and China with the trade conflict between Europe and Japan in the 1970s and 1980s reveals striking...
The European Union set an October deadline for “tangible results” in tackling its growing trade deficit with China, after the two sides held talks in Brussels in an attempt to avoid a trade war. “Not everything will be solved, not everything will be fixed, but we think that between now and October, our teams have sufficient time to deliver the tangible results,” EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic told reporters on Monday, according to Bloomberg News. He spoke after “intensive, focused and...
Talks between EU trade commissioner and Chinese commerce minister come as bloc seeks to limit influx of Chinese imports.