European Commission will continue to deal with US tariffs 'in a calm, coherent way'

Vivenne Clarke

European Commission Spokesperson for Economic Security and Trade, Olof Gill, has said that the European Commission will continue to respond to US tariffs “in a calm, coherent way.”

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Mr Gill said it was too early to say precisely what was going to happen next. “I think we can all agree that the situation is volatile, changing day by day, sometimes hour by hour. So we're going to proceed as we've been doing all along, which is to look at the problem in a calm, coherent way.

“The European Commission, which is responsible for EU trade policy on behalf of the entire European Union, will continue to talk to our member states, will continue to talk to industry, and we will plot a careful course forward on that basis.

“We're going to take the time we need to reflect on this latest development in a calm, coherent way, in synchronisation with our member states and with our industry. And you'll be aware, I'm sure, that yesterday our member-states, with near total unanimity, gave the Commission a mandate to go forward with our proposed countermeasures on the first wave of US tariffs.

“Now, whether we proceed on that basis remains to be seen. We're going to take the time we need to assess this internally, but we will always stand by our member states, our consumers and our industry.

"We've said from the get-go in this whole saga that we want to negotiate, that what we're interested in doing with the Americans is reducing tariffs, even eliminating them, not allowing them to escalate. So that remains the case. We're still ready to negotiate, and we'll be talking to our American counterparts as we go along.”

Mr Gill pointed out that since Mr Trump was elected, the EU had been open to the possibility of greater cooperation on energy.

“When it comes to the zero-for-zero offer, that's been on the table, believe it or not, since 2019, since the Trump-one administration. So all we were doing there was re-tabling something that was already on offer. All we can do here is present to our American counterparts what we view as the very clear and obvious case that we should be working together rather than entering into a conflictual situation.”

Mr Gill said from the EU perspective, the trajectory of EU-China relations had not changed because of this situation. I

"t's certainly true that we are engaging with China. Commissioner Šefčovič was in China a couple of weeks ago, and President von der Leyen spoke to the Chinese Premier earlier this week.

“What we want to do is strengthen the EU-China trade and economic relationship, but there are many problems within that relationship that the Chinese need to address when it comes to the unlevel playing field, when it comes to challenges that European companies are experiencing in China. We would need to see these meaningfully addressed so that we can grow the China-EU relationship stably and fairly.”

With regard to the risk of trade distortions or the risk that trade flows could impact the EU in a harmful way, Mr Gill said that the European Commission was “extremely aware of this. W

"We've raised this with our Chinese counterparts, who agreed that they would take every step to prevent this from happening. Along with that, this week we announced that we were going to set up a task force on precisely this issue, on trade diversion, so that we can be ahead of the problem and be ready to react as necessary to protect EU industry and consumers," he said.