(Zero Hedge)—With Trump inching ever closer to unleashing the “most beautiful word in the dictionary” on America’s trading partners – especially after tonight’s disastrous Kamala Harris interview with Bret Baier – the European Union is bracing for the worst and according to Bloomberg, has already prepared a list of American goods it could target with tariffs if the former president wins the US election and follows through on his threat to hit the bloc with punitive trade measures.
Citing “people familiar with the bloc’s thinking”, Bloomberg writes that new levies against US firms aren’t a base case for the EU and will only be used to retaliate against a move by the White House. In other words, a threat to Trump when, not if, he becomes president again. Which is a bold move for Brussels, let’s see how it pays off for them when Trump and Europe, so desperate to export its goods anywhere now that China no longer wants much of what Europe has to sell and which exports far more to the US than it imports, launch a tit-for-tat trade war.
Trump caught the EU by surprise in 2018 when he hit European steel and aluminum exports with tariffs. In that instance, the bloc targeted politically sensitive companies with retaliatory duties, including Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Levi Strauss jeans. Since Trump’s win in 2016, the EU has adopted several trade defense tools, including an instrument to respond to economic coercion. Unfortunately for Europe, in the years since, the continent has been flooded with cheap Chinese EV models which have crushed what little is left of the German economy (now that cheap Russian gas is a thing of the past), and has forced it to fight for its “manufacturing powerhouse” survival. Which is why any trade war with the US will only lead to an accelerated demise of what is already a continent barely hanging on.
Meanwhile, Trump is unlikely to be scared off by the threat of retaliatory tariffs: “to me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariffs,’ Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, where he reiterated his desire to impose broad tariffs against trading partners post the election. “It’s my favorite word.”
Trump has said that as president, he would target countries like China with tariffs anywhere from 60% to 100%, with a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports from other countries. He could also impose counter-measures against European digital services taxes that implicitly go after US technology champions.
“Our allies have taken advantage of us. More so than our enemies,” Trump said. “Our allies are the European Union. We have a trade deficit of $300 billion with the European Union.”
The news is the latest development as the EU prepares an impact assessment of the consequences of the November ballot, paying particular attention to the scenario in which Trump emerges as victor. Regardless of who wins the election, trade relations with the US will be a top priority. In the event of a Harris win, the EU will seek to sort out several of the irritants left unsolved during Biden’s presidency such as a permanent deal to get rid of the remaining steel and aluminum tariffs, said the person.
Harris has cast Trump’s tariffs as a tax on American consumers, even though her senile, demented boss whom she overthrew in a quiet palace coup in July, has refused to drop any of them
Even though Biden’s rhetoric has been more conciliatory than Trump’s, and his alignment with the EU over Ukraine has helped to repair the transatlantic relationship, EU officials remain conscious that his trade policy still has much in common with his predecessor’s ‘America First’ approach. The Europeans were shaken, in particular, by Biden’s $390 billion-plus subsidy program to support green technology, which offers companies an incentive to shift investment from Europe to the US.
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