A 50% tariff on EU goods would halt trade between the bloc and US, says minister
US president Donald Trump's threatened 50 per cent tariff on EU imports would effectively halt trade between the United States and European Union, a Government minister has warned.
Minister of State for European Affairs Thomas Byrne said it was really important for EU member states and the European Commission to remain calm and measured in response to president Trump's warning and not react to 'every single utterance of provocation'.
Advertisement
In April, Mr Trump announced a 20 per cent tariff on EU goods being sold into the US. He later reduced that to 10 per cent until July 8th to allow for time for talks with Brussels on a potential agreement.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin holding a bilateral meeting with US president Donald Trump at the White House in March (Niall Carson/PA)
However, on Friday Mr Trump claimed the talks were 'going nowhere' and said he was recommending that the 50 per cent tariff rate comes into effect on June 1st.
The US president also announced he would be imposing a 25 per cent tariff on all Apple iPhones manufactured outside the US. He warned that tariffs were also coming for other foreign manufactured smartphones.
Mr Byrne said the EU was in a 'position of strength' in the negotiations with the US as he urged the European Commission to 'stand firm' and secure a good deal with the US on trade.
Advertisement
The Fianna Fáil minister said the president's threat was 'clearly very concerning'.
'I think it would be very damaging for everybody,' he told RTÉ Radio One's This Week programme. 'I think it wouldn't just be a 50 per cent tariff, I think it would effectively stop trade if that were the case, because I don't think people would be willing to buy goods at a 50 per cent tariff and, of course, there would be EU retaliatory measures.
'But, in the meantime, I think it's really important to note that president Trump hasn't actually implemented this, and there are talks going on between the European Union and the US.
'I think it's really, really important that we stay calm, we stay measured, we don't react to every single utterance of provocation.
Advertisement
'And I think that that has served us well up to now and, in fact, has served other countries well, who have also got in the crosshairs (of President Trump).
'It's just so important for us, and it's important for the entire European Union as well. I think we are there with a really united approach – we're bigger in population than the US, we're a very important trading partner to the US, their systems could not work, their supply of goods could not work without what's coming in from the European Union, and vice versa, to some extent as well.
'So I think we have a position of strength. We have to use that in the negotiations but ultimately know that trade at low or no tariffs benefits everybody.'
Mr Byrne rejects claims from the US administration that EU proposals on a trade deal were not of the quality of measures suggested by other international trading partners.
Advertisement
'The European Commission, which acts on behalf of all of us, is engaged on trade issues all the time, they're experts at trade,' he said.
'They're dealing obviously with changes in the temperature, to say the least, in the US administration's approach, based on what president Trump has tweeted. That presents a difficulty, I think, for anybody.
'But I think that the Commission is doing a good job. They have to stand firm for us. But they know the importance of free traded goods, and they also know that this is critical for America.
'We saw the whole issue with China in recent weeks, where crippling tariffs were put in, which basically was stopping trading in total between the two countries, and they were reduced.
Advertisement
'So I think that we need a bit of strategic patience.'
The minister added: 'We just have to deal with what we're faced with, and this is what we're faced with. There is an unpredictability in the relationship. There's no question about that.
'It's in all our interests to make that as predictable as possible. So, we don't want to add fuel to the fire. We want to have low or no tariffs.
'And I think, ultimately, America would want that too, because they know how dependent they are for semiconductors, for pharma, and they can't change that overnight simply with a tariff instrument. It's not possible to do that.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
Blow for Rachel Reeves after UK economy shrinks by more than expected
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference.
Telegraph
16 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Live Economy shrinks in blow for Reeves
Britain's economy shrank at the start of the second quarter, official figures show, in a blow for the Chancellor after her spending review. UK gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.3pc during the month, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This was worse than analysts' fears that the economy would shrink by 0.1pc and follows a 0.7pc expansion during the first three months of the year. The data covers the month when Donald Trump launched his so-called 'liberation day' tariff onslaught which threatened to upend global trade. ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said: 'After increasing for each of the four preceding months, April saw the largest monthly fall on record in goods exports to the United States with decreases seen across most types of goods, following the recent introduction of tariffs.' The figures come a day after economists warned that Britain faces tax rises in the autumn after Rachel Reeves unveiled her spending review. The Chancellor has made growing the economy one of her key missions as she battles to shore up the public finances. An expanding economy would mean that she is better able to pay off the nation's debt and would improve living standards. Ms Reeves said: 'Our number one mission is delivering growth to put more money in people's pockets through our Plan for Change, and while these numbers are clearly disappointing, I'm determined to deliver on that mission.'
Telegraph
16 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Why Christianity might face the same fate as Paganism
In the spring of 2023, the Royal Household issued invitations to the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla featuring an unexpected crowned head – that of the Green Man. Had the King, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, embraced paganism? The folklorist Francis Young dispelled the chatter, explaining in The Spectator that the Green Man was just 'a personification of the natural world' – and that, as a coherent figure, he had been invented in 1939 by Lady Raglan, one of Young's less scrupulous predecessors in the field. Young knows everything about everything you never quite knew you wanted to know. And in Silence of the Gods, his impressive new history of the end of European paganism, he does so while conveying a dizzying level of doubt as to whether anything of interest is knowable with any certainty at all. Who exactly, for instance, were those 'pagans' against whom Henry of Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV of England, mounted crusades in the Lithuania of the 1390s? How did the legend of the werewolf come to be especially entwined with the folk customs of what was to become present-day Latvia? Having drawn one's attention to such tantalising questions, Young, a scholar immune to the temptations of flowered but delusive byways, at times refuses to answer them neatly. Silence of the Gods treats lesser discussed regions of Europe – the Baltic world, the Volga-Ural, Lapland/Sapmi, Finland and, in a more clement aside, the Canaries – over their long, transitional and little-documented Early Modern years. We're taken from the Christian-conversion processes initiated in the late 14th century to residual and local rituals that, in a handful of cases, by way of the potent crucible of 19th-century nationalism, have trickled into living memory. Young makes an irrefutable case that Lithuania, in particular, ought to be a great deal more studied and considered, whether by scholars, general readers or even contemporary policymakers. For, of all the voices that surface within Young's lightly technical, fundamentally clear prose, I was most struck by that of the Polish lawyer Paweł Włodkowic, who in 1414 established the juridical principle, uniquely advanced in its day, that pagans should not be massacred simply for being pagans. 'It is an error,' wrote Włodkowic, 'completely intolerable, that Christians should gather there to do war against the infidels solely because they are infidels, or because it is said that their goal is the spreading of the Christian Faith, for under the colour of piety impieties are committed.' Upon this rock was founded the political and ecumenical miracle that was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as, Young persuasively adds, 'the modern world of human rights and international law'. Yet of this brilliant moral jurist's personal character or individual life, we hear nothing. The same goes for the whole extensive galère of Grand Dukes, Jesuit or Lutheran missionaries, 'pagan' rebels, antiquaries, witch hunters and Romantic nationalist litterateurs upon whose evidence Young draws. Such restraint is hardly incompatible with this book's paradoxical quest. Young traces 'the urge to personify' within religious traditions who have left scarce traces of those personalised details. The names and portfolios of Pagan deities here seem to be linguistic corruptions of Christian saints, or Classical parallels misapplied by the Christian scholars recording 'pagan' practices. Such austerity demands a high level of readerly commitment. But it delivers, by the end of this concisely expressed, conceptually meaty book, a substantial reward. The argument at which Young arrives is both consistent and plausible; that the 'pagan' religions of Europe, faced with Christianity's aggressive expansion, entered a third, 'creolised' state. New ideas grew out of, or alongside, Christianity, without being convincingly Christian – an active, 'creative response' to the new, confessional faith's incursion. In an epilogue that reads as startlingly topical, Young proceeds to the next logical query – in the face of dominant European secularism, are we now beholding a 'creolised' transformation of Christianity in turn? (You only need to look to a doctrinally vague 'surf church' in Porto, Portugal, for proof.) Young again displays his knack for identifying a haunting question, without committing to a definitive or simplistic answer. But he does leave one parting insurance policy – 'human religiosity is full of surprises' – which allows room for the recent and intriguing speculation that Gen Z might be warming towards Christianity after all.
