European Commission receives green light for US trade talks

Release time：Apr 18, 2019 From：admin

The European Commission has welcomed the decision by the European Council to adopt the negotiating directives for trade talks with the United States, thus continuing to deliver on the implementation of the joint statement agreed by Presidents Juncker and Trump in July 2018.

European Union member states gave the commission the green light to start formal negotiations with the US on two agreements, one on conformity assessment to make it easier for companies to prove their products meet technical requirements on both sides, and the other on eliminating tariffs strictly focused on industrial goods, excluding agricultural products.

The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said that they want to slash tariffs on industrial products as this could lead to an additional increase in EU and US exports worth around €26 billion, while the EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said that they are now ready to start formal talks for these two targeted agreements.

The European Commission indicated that its economic analysis already shows that an EU-US agreement on eliminating tariffs on industrial goods would increase EU exports to the US by eight percent and US exports to the EU by nine percent by 2033. This corresponds to additional gains of €27 billion and €26 billion in EU and US exports respectively.