The European Union appears to have dodged massive across-the-board tariffs after Donald Trump announced a 90 day pause.
The US President posted on his social network that he was upping a growing trade war with China by imposing a 125 percent tariffs “effective immediately”.
But other countries who have not “retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States” would not be hit with the latest, most serious, tariffs which had come into effect just 12 hours before.
The EU has not retaliated against those wider US tariffs set at 20 percent.
But the European Union has signed-off on €20.9 billion retaliatory counter measures against US steel and aluminium 25 percent tariffs which came into force last month, and are not being paused by Trump.
Officials in Brussels were unclear last night whether Trump was letting the EU off the hook or not. But a US official reportedly confirmed overnight that the EU would get relief because no retaliatory measures had yet come into effect.
The EU retaliation to US steel and aluminium tariffs are currently scheduled to start coming int effect next week.
Those countries who fall within the remit of Trump’s pause will be charged a lower tariff of 10 percent for most products except cars, car parts, steel and aluminium.
It means tens of billions of Euro worth of trade are still impacted by tariffs, but it is a considerable improvement on how things looked yesterday,
Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, was the first European leader last night to sound as though he was sure the tariff pause would apply to the EU, advocating “let’s make the best of the next 90 days”.
Meanwhile Tánaiste Simon Harris has been holding talks in Washington.
He said his meeting with the US Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, was a “valuable exchange on pharma and EU-US trade”.
The Tánaiste was in and out of meetings with Republicans not far from the White House whilst Trump was making his u-turn.
The Howard Lutnick meeting took place “shortly after President Trump’s latest announcement in respect of tariffs”, Simon Harris confirmed.
“We discussed that announcement and the likely next steps.
I welcomed the fact that the President has announced the suspension of the higher tariffs announced on April 2 for a period of 90 days. This I know will come as a relief to many businesses in Ireland.
I recognise that further engagement and clarification is required between the European Commission and the administration on the detail of this.”