BERLIN (Reuters) -A senior European lawmaker said on Saturday Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against U.S. President Donald Trump’s “outrageous” threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.
The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Bernd Lange, the head of the European Parliament’s trade committee.
The bloc had also suspended all countermeasures after the U.S. imposed an initial tariff of 20% on European imports in April.
“It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%,” Lange told Reuters.
“This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner,” he added.
Europe should make it clear that these “unfair trade practices” were unacceptable, Lange said.
“We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately,” he said.
“The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly.”
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, writing by John Revill, editing by Thomas Seythal)
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