The European Union will have to commit to buying $350 billion of American energy to get a reprieve from Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, the U.S. president said late Monday, dismissing Brussels’ offer of “zero-for-zero” tariffs on cars and industrial goods.
Trump’s comments at a White House press conference were in response to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying earlier Monday that the EU had offered to drop the bloc’s tariffs to zero on cars and industrial goods imported from the U.S. if Trump reciprocated.
Asked by a reporter whether the offer was enough for him to back down, Trump said: “No, it’s not.”
“We have a deficit with the European Union of $350 billion and it’s gonna disappear fast,” Trump said. “One of the ways that that can disappear easily and quickly is they’re gonna have to buy our energy from us … they can buy it, we can knock off $350 billion in one week. They have to buy and commit to buy a like amount of energy.”
Von der Leyen’s offer came after Trump last week slapped 20 percent tariffs on the EU and a minimum 10 percent levy on other trade partners. In response, financial markets across the world have lost trillions of dollars in value, with European stocks on Monday suffering their biggest one-day falls since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t mean anything having a surplus.’ It means a lot, in my opinion. It’s almost like a profit or loss statement,” Trump said.
The president was speaking in the Oval Office Monday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who traveled to Washington to hold talks with Trump and seek relief from the U.S. tariffs. In comments to the press after the meeting, the American president doubled down on his criticism of the EU but indicated he was up for doing a deal with the bloc, as long as it committed to closing its trade deficit with the U.S. by buying more American energy.
The idea of buying U.S. energy in a bid to stave off tariffs is not a new one. Almost as soon as Trump was reelected, von der Leyen suggested opening negotiations to buy more American liquefied natural gas (LNG). But POLITICO reported that the U.S. had, in response, offered no clarity about how a deal would work.
On Monday, asked whether his global tariffs were a strong-arm negotiation tactic or permanent, Trump said: “There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations, because there are things we need beyond tariffs.”
He added: “If we can make a really fair deal and a good deal for the United States, not a good deal for others, this is America first. It’s now America first.”
Later in the press conference, a reporter asked Trump whether there were two or three countries on his list that he felt were further along in getting their tariffs lowered, Trump name-checked the EU: “European Union. I mean as badly as they’ve treated us, they’ve brought their car tariffs essentially off. I guess they brought it down to 2.5 and I hear maybe to nothing.”
But he also indicated that he wanted the EU to reduce its standards to allow more U.S. goods to enter its market, referring to safety measures as “non-monetary tariffs.”
“It’s tariffs where they put things on where they make it impossible for you to sell a car … they make it so difficult, the standards and the tests,” Trump said. “They come up with rules and regulations that are just designed for one reason: that you can’t sell your product in those countries. And we’re not gonna let that happen. Those are called non-monetary barriers.”
In an indication of what is driving Trump’s actions, the president harked back to a time when U.S. tariffs were sky high.
“You know our country was the strongest from 1870 to 1913,” Trump said. “You know why? It was all tariff-based. We had no income tax. Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let’s charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country.”
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