THE US is expected to narrow the range of goods subject to its 50% tariff on products containing steel and aluminium within weeks, said Bloomberg News citing people familiar with European Union thinking on the matter.
If that happens, it would ease a persistent irritant in transatlantic trade relations, the newswire said on Tuesday.
The planned changes would reduce the number of so-called derivative products caught by the metals tariff, which currently applies to a list of more than 400 items.
The EU has long complained that the broad scope of the measure conflicts with last year’s bilateral trade deal, which capped tariffs on most European goods at 15%, said Bloomberg News. The revisions would not affect tariffs on commodity-grade forms of the metals themselves, it added.
The potential relief comes at a turbulent moment for transatlantic relations. The US-EU trade accord was thrown into uncertainty after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose reciprocal tariffs globally. Washington responded by introducing a new 10% global levy on top of existing duties, pushing charges on some EU exports above the levels agreed in the accord.
The European Parliament suspended legislative work on ratifying the deal on Monday, seeking clarity on the direction of US trade policy.
Nevertheless, both sides have indicated a desire to preserve the agreement even as any transition to a new framework could take months, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Bloomberg News.
EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic has held multiple conversations with his US counterparts in recent days and briefed the bloc’s ambassadors on the latest developments on Monday.
