BCN-13,14 EU finance chief blasts Trump over ‘inappropriate’ trade sanctions

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EU finance chief blasts Trump over ‘inappropriate’ trade sanctions

BUENOS AIRES, July 23, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – EU finance chief Pierre Moscovici
fired a barb at US President Donald Trump on Sunday as he called on both
sides of an ongoing global trade dispute to “act as allies.”

The US and EU have been at loggerheads since Trump angered European allies
by announcing tariffs on steel and aluminum as he launched trade restrictions
targeting China in particular.

Referring to Trump branding the EU, alongside China and Russia, as trade
“foes,” Moscovici said the EU is “willing to build bridges.”

“What I stressed several times in my meetings here is that the EU is
certainly not the author of major trade imbalances,” Moscovici told reporters
during the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires.

On Saturday, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke at the conference
about wanting to “balance” the country’s trade relationships with China and
the EU, calling on both to respect “free, fair and reciprocal trade.”

But Moscovici said that “we believe that targeting us is certainly
inappropriate… and that we must act with the US as allies — not foes but
allies.”

“These meetings take place in an international context which is changing,”
he said. “The multilateral system of which the G20 is a central piece is
under significant pressure, trade tensions are high and threaten to escalate
further. All of this creates uncertainty for the economic outlook.”

He added: “We must remain cool-headed.”

Trump’s protectionist policies have come under fire from all sides at the
summit, which groups finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s
20 largest economies.

On Saturday, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire called on Trump to
“return to reason.”

As well as imposing tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on
aluminum, Trump stuck a 25 percent levy on $34 billion of goods from China
with an additional $16 billion on the way.

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EU-US-ECONOMY-TRADE-MOSCOVICI 2 LAST BUENOS AIRES

He has threatened to target European automotive exports and to impose
duties on the entire $500 billion of goods the US imports from China.

“The impact of protectionist measures already implemented has been,
luckily, so far limited, but the risk of escalation is there,” said
Moscovici.

The International Monetary Fund predicts that in a worst-case scenario,
$430 billion — or a half percentage point of global GDP — could be cut in
2020 if all tariff threats and retaliations are carried out.

“Further trade escalation conflicts would negatively affect welfare in all
countries involved — in the US also,” said Moscovici.

Protectionism, he said, benefits no one, creating “no winners, only
casualties.”

IMF chief Christine Lagarde had warned on Wednesday that the US economy was
“especially vulnerable” to trade conflicts “because so much of its global
trade will be subject to retaliatory measures.”

BSS/AFP/HR/1010