Brussels is targeting American yachts, tobacco and orange juice for retaliatory tariffs after Donald Trump hit steel and aluminium exports with a 25 per cent tax.
Sweetcorn, rice, almonds, cranberries, iron, steel, aluminium, certain vehicles and clothes, including Harley Davidson motorcycles and Levi’s jeans, are on the EU hit list.
Non-alcoholic beer, door and window frames, kitchenware, poultry and sausages are also in the firing line.
Don’t retaliate!
This is what happened in the 1930s, one lot imposed tariffs, everyone else retaliated and the global economy went down the toilet. Don’t do this. Just stand there and take it.
Don’t stand there and take it – remove all tariffs and regulatory barriers on US exports to the EU.
Your citizens will be better off and Trump might do the same in return.
A friend tells me that most almonds used in food manufacture come from California. I think nearly all cranberries do too.
Anyway as Agent Smith alludes, as usual the EU has a 50/50 choice and gets it wrong.
We keep getting told by all the clever people that tariffs don’t work (of course they’ve ignored the EU’s tariffs for decades, but lets forget that for now) and they just make the tariff imposer poorer. Its the equivalent of throwing rocks at your own windows. So when the EU sees the US throwing rocks at its windows, why do the great and the good decide they must throw rocks at their own windows too?
And the answer is that tariffs do benefit the person putting them on, if the other party they trade with doesn’t have them. In such a scenario one country/bloc has protected producers who can freely export to the other, but not vice versa. So life is good for the protected producer. He has a captive (ish) home market, and can compete with the foreign producer on his soil. So yes, the US putting tariffs on EU products when there were none does affect the EU. Producers in the EU lose out.
So tariffs aren’t purely self harming. They have benefit to the country/bloc imposing them too. If they didn’t the EU wouldn’t want to retaliate. If the US suddenly started blowing up its car factories, would the EU do likewise? Of course not they sit and watch in glee, thinking of all the extra cars they could export.
It appears to me that trade tariffs are an all or nothing thing. You either have a trade system where there are no tariffs, or everyone has whatever they see fit. You can’t have a mixed system where some are allowed to have them, and others are told they can’t. That only allows the tariff imposing countries to leach off the ones who have open markets. And I would include non-tariff barriers in that – the UK banning chlorinated chicken is as much a tariff barrier as a monetary one, just at an infinite rate in effect. So we are no better than the US here – we are banning things from abroad on purely financial rather than health pretexts. But of course no one points that out, its just Orange Man Bad, as ever.
Jim said:
“tariffs do benefit the person putting them on, if the other party they trade with doesn’t have them. In such a scenario one country/bloc has protected producers”
You’re confusing “benefitting the people” with “benefiting producers”. The core problem of mercantilism.
Tariffs benefit producers(*) at the expense of consumers.
* and they don’t even benefit all producers; those who need to import components, raw materials, machinery, etc., all lose out.
(and they don’t even benefit producers for long; being protected they tend to become less innovative over time, retreat into their captive market, and so become an uncompetitive joke internationally)
Jim,
“And I would include non-tariff barriers in that – the UK banning chlorinated chicken is as much a tariff barrier as a monetary one, just at an infinite rate in effect. So we are no better than the US here – we are banning things from abroad on purely financial rather than health pretexts. But of course no one points that out, its just Orange Man Bad, as ever.”
Oh, 100%. Animal welfare/health of food laws are generally trade restrictions. There’s some useful biological protection laws but that isn’t most of it.
I don’t really care personally that Trump is doing this. I’m not buying Levis or Harleys. I’ve stopped buying Pinot Noir from Napa because Chile is better value. Is US steel and aluminium actually worth it compared to other steel? I think he’s a bit of an arse, but this stuff is more observation than personal. The EU sticking tariffs on EVs and solar panels is bad, especially as they keep constantly saying how we should be greener. We have tariffs on non-EU food, which is stupid.
I agree with Jim, but only up to a point. Not all restrictions are on health ‘pretexts’.
Chlorine-washed chicken might be a bit of a red herring, as the UK has chlorine-washed salads already but food safety is not to be sniffed at. You might be OK with the import of antibiotic and hormone-stuffed meat from the US (I’m not, but I suppose if it is clearly labelled….), but do you want the same lack of standards to apply to meat from, say, China? And what’s the point of having animal welfare standards in the UK if we allow in foodstuffs from places where they don’t give a shit?
Similarly, I would not like the stupid and useless cybertruck, with its lethal front end, being legal in the UK. The Yanks have 5 times the road deaths per 100k population as the UK and I suspect a lot of that is due to massive vehicles with lower safety standards.
The UK gets 4.8 billion a year from tariffs. That seems to be a gross figure. probably nets out a bit lower. Not a large number, we could go completely tariffless and we’d not be much worse off, if at all.
Anybody know what the equivalent figure is for the EU?
You want your customers to be better off, any Landlord will tell you this, you’re more likely to get paid and more likely to get away with charging higher prices on them in the future.
The USA are our customers so we don’t want them to be worse off by actions taken here. UFT please.
@ Marius
Any that’s the problem – everyone wants to pick & choose what things they want to import (without tariffs or restrictions) and what they would like to import. We’d like cheap Chinese tat, phones and TVs but don’t want their animal produce.
The issue (for Trump) is that picking & choosing benefits the importer at the expense of the exporter – so either import everything from a country or nothing.
RichardT,
“(and they don’t even benefit producers for long; being protected they tend to become less innovative over time, retreat into their captive market, and so become an uncompetitive joke internationally)”
American cars. GM and Ford sell a lot less cars than they did 25 years ago because they’re just not very good. Have you seen the new Ford Capri? Lewis Collins must be turning in his grave.
Outrageous about almonds. I am astonished to hear that people import American sausages. Why? I don’t mean “why” in the Guardian sense of outrage. Merely “why?”, are there some good’uns?
Western Bloke sad:
“American cars. GM and Ford sell a lot less cars than they did 25 years ago because they’re just not very good”
I was actually thinking of British cars in the ‘70s. Or the British computer industry of a similar time.
Marius said:
“I would not like the stupid and useless cybertruck, with its lethal front end, being legal in the UK. The Yanks have 5 times the road deaths per 100k population as the UK and I suspect a lot of that is due to massive vehicles with lower safety standards.”
I’ve only driven over there for a week, but fro that my guess would be that it’s more to do with their appalling driving.
Lane discipline isn’t even a concept over there.
But I suspect our wonderful beneficial diversity will soon bring us up to American levels in this.
Both those sectors suffered from the 2nd Viscount Stansgate deciding he knew better than markets and customers, the picking of winners and the enforced mergers of smaller companies to create “national champions”. eg, British Leyland.
@Jim
I tend to agree
The EU has been busy erecting trade barriers for its entire existence
It cannot be surprised when they get pushback
“I’ve only driven over there for a week, but fro that my guess would be that it’s more to do with their appalling driving.”
Agreed. I have driven only a couple of weeks over there in Europe, but I was instantly impressed with the quality of drivers. The Champs Elysees and Arc de Triumph traffic circle would paralyze the avg American driver.
Not that Americans aren’t capable of driving as well as Europeans, they just don’t learn it, basically, because they don’t have to. There is great emphasis on vehicle safety, though the real problem is the drivers.
A Fiat ad 50 years ago: “The art isn’t in surviving an accident; it is in avoiding accidents.”
Trump could see the world of tariffs is a mess. He could get his people to negotiate with a hundred different countries. But in his wonderful style, he slapped tariffs on a hundred countries. And now, those hundred countries are coming to him to negotiate.
Art of the Trumpster.
You can understand a lot about Americans if you simply posit that they dislike each other.
Fatalities on the road, murders, drug dealing, shooting up schools, … Hell, the early adoption of high divorce rates. The people who actually celebrate abortions …
My immediate first impression of Americans was how generous and hospitable they were. They must have been an unrepresentative sample or – here’s my guess – Americans tend to be hospitable etc to individuals with whom they are face-to-face, it’s their fellow citizens in a mass society that they dislike.
@dearieme
I think it’s more about the media which really does seem to hate US citizens, especially those outside urban areas
Gamecock at 11.23
I’ve driven from the Place de la Concorde, up the Champs Elysees and round the Arc de Triomphe – for a dare. No problems. But the thousands of miles I have driven in the US, I had a lot of near misses. Seven-mile bridge in Florida was very stressful.
Cheers Yet Another Chris
Candidly, I have decided my next yatch definitely won’t be built in America.
@Jim
“ So life is good for the protected producer. He has a captive (ish) home market, and can compete with the foreign producer on his soil. “
The home producer is diverting resources, capital, labour, etc for export so has less capacity to serve the domestic market = short supply = higher prices.
Domestic consumers subsidise exporters and pay higher prices on imports AND domestic produce which price match taxed imports, and via reduced supply, all to protect the profits of some favoured producers.
Higher prices mean consumers have less to spend (made poorer) throughout the economy = reduced need for production = fewer jobs needed. Also lack of effective competition removes incentive to innovate = stagnant economy. Exhibit A: the Fourth Reich, aka EU.
DM – Everybody in America buys a house in the least black area they can afford. It’s amazing how much money and effort they spend on avoiding blacks, while pretending “good schools” are the reason they do a four hour commute every day.
Because the truth is offensive.
@Marius
“ And what’s the point of having animal welfare standards in the UK if we allow in foodstuffs from places where they don’t give a shit?”
The point is to keep out product from other Countries to protect home producers. Human welfare comes first and “animal welfare” is a recent invention out of the same stable as “climate change”, war on plastic. Adapted by the protectionist EU from the lunacy of t he Eco-Fascists.
Hormones are produced in Humans and animals naturally and are metabolised and excreted, and this is the case with hormones consumed. Antibiotics also are metabolised and excreted. If not women would only ever have to take one contraceptive pill which would last a lifetime, and we only ever need to take antibiotics once for eternal protection, and our endocrine system would only ever be used once.
The protectionist rules play to the ignorance of the masses who are easily frightened, who know no better and believe the high priests or these days the scientists – like masks and the mRNA jollop, and social distancing during COVID.
Our ancestors believed wearing cloves of garlic round the neck protected them from vampires – we haven’t moved on much, we just have substituted other remedies and horrors for garlic and vampires.
Oooo… hormones in beef – scary… Oooo antibiotics in chicken…. Oooo mummy. Are vampires real?
Our ancestors believed wearing cloves of garlic round the neck protected them from vampires
Shows how what they knew. Garlic doesn’t do anything to vampires, you need a crucifix and holy water.
Ireland has joined 25 other EU partners in voting for retaliatory tariffs (only Hungary opposed).
As a wag elsewhere has commented “Let’s hope it’s a good year for potatoes, be a pity if the EU’s Corn Laws got in the way of getting fed”.
Bongo – I suspect Ireland is about to experience what they should have experienced after deciding to take the side of the EU against the UK in post-Brexit negotiations: they’re about to find out how important Ireland is.
They can bid adieu to a lot of those American inward investment jobs, but don’t worry, they’ll still be choc full of Third World migrants to dynamise their economy.
Now that China and the EU have decided to play chicken (actually roadkill), I wonder if TTK and the other intellectual pygmies in the Labour party will dare to do the same? Must be a few of them that’d like to stick a bloody nose on The Donald by assuming they are now on the winning side.
AS – all signs point to the UK gov being cautious:
Downing Street has declined to officially back a “buy British” campaign in response to Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said the UK was “an open-trading nation” and the government was “not going to tell people where they buy their stuff”.
The government has repeatedly stressed that it will not be rushed into retaliatory measures after the US slapped a 10% import tax on nearly all UK products entering the US, on top of already-announced 25% levies on aluminium, steel and cars.
The PM told a senior group of MPs the government is keeping its options open for retaliating to US tariffs “if necessary” but he did not think the UK should “jump in with both feet”.
“I think that trying to negotiate an arrangement which mitigates the tariffs is better,” he told the House of Commons Liaison Committee.
China doesn’t have much of a choice, the US is out to get them. The EU is hopelessly sclerotic, confused, and led by unserious people so they were always likely to self-harm.
Britain is so far playing a smarter game, they know there’s nothing to be gained from falling out with the Americans. Fighting with President Trump is like wrestling a pig, he enjoys it much more than you will.
The Yanks have 5 times the road deaths per 100k population as the UK and I suspect a lot of that is due to massive vehicles with lower safety standards.
I suspect a lot of that is due to US drivers covering double the annual mileage of UK drivers. It’s a big country!
The EU in one quote:
When Trump imposed steel and aluminium tariffs in his first term, the EU responded by targeting emblematic US goods such as Harley-Davidson motorbikes, blue jeans and bourbon. “We can also do stupid,” was how the then European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, described the counter-measures, as he said the bloc had no choice
Jean-Luc Drunker undersells his colleagues, the EU does nothing but stupid.
Oh dear, shortly after the EU announced retaliatory tariffs against the US, Trump lowers tariffs for those countries who made representations to lower their own barriers.
Who could have predicted that the EU would be on the wrong end of events?
Who could possibly have foreseen this
Trump announces 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries, but raises them to 125% for China – business live
Stocks surge after US president makes the announcement on Truth Social
Maya Yang (now); Léonie Chao-Fong, Tom Ambrose, Jasper Jolly and Adam Fulton (earlier)
Wed 9 Apr 2025 13.58 EDT
The shock is that there are people in governments right now (Auf w., pets) who didn’t see this coming. It’s a good thing nobody wears monocles anymore.
Damn these inscrutable Americans, what can they possibly mean?
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has been speaking to reporters outside the White House after Donald Trump announced he authorised a 90-day pause on tariffs on most countries and a China tariff raise to 125%.
Bessent said countries who did not retaliate against the US tariff announcement last week will be “rewarded”.
“Do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded,” he said.
“Zut alors, we should retaliate and hope for good things, hon hon hon” – the EU
“Our ancestors believed wearing cloves of garlic round the neck protected them from vampires”
What’s your point? Show us your evidence that someone – anyone – wearing garlic was attacked by a vampire.
“You’re confusing “benefitting the people” with “benefiting producers”. The core problem of mercantilism.”
Places where there is plenty of well paid employment are usually better places than ones where the factories have all closed and the only jobs left are minimum wage ones working in Starbucks and the like. I think most people would prefer to live in generally prosperous places, than what we have in the UK right now, where the average High Street looks worse than after a visit by the Luftwaffe.
Gamecock
I have a rock I can sell you.
It prevents attacks by tigers on its owner.
As demonstrated by the fact I have never been attacked by a tiger.
Reasonable price.
Jim said:
“ think most people would prefer to live in generally prosperous places, than what we have in the UK right now”
Britain is still a fairly rich place, and would look and feel like one if our government didn’t take nearly half of what we make and spend it on paying people to live in idleness.
Richard – Britain is still a fairly rich place, and would look and feel like one if our government didn’t take nearly half of what we make and spend it on paying people to live in idleness
This is why I hate doing my tax return.
Chernyy Drakon – How much are you wanting for that rock?
Jim – the average High Street looks worse than after a visit by the Luftwaffe.
If a flight of Junkers Ju 88’s dropped their payload of Sprengbombe Cylindrisch 250’s on the High Streets, would Turkey be obligated to declare war on Germany?
No, retaliate. Then in the ensuing crash and dumpster fire maybe the globalist WEF wing of the ‘we need one world government’ politics will be sufficiently repudiated by the voters that they won’t be able to try again for a couple generations.
“It prevents attacks by tigers on its owner.”
Should work here in the SE US. And for Steve in UK.
RichardT: Lane discipline isn’t even a concept over there.
You’ve only driven there for a week, which apparently wasn’t long enough to learn their driving rules. I lived there for 3 years, and the driving is fine; obvious large cities exempted, as in every other city.
Being patronising isn’t necessary.