Brussels’ zero-for-zero tariff offer not enough, U.S. president says, but indicates he’s open to a deal if the bloc commits to closing the trade deficit in goods.

Summary

Trump has rejected the EU’s “zero-for-zero” tariff offer on cars and industrial goods, demanding instead that the bloc commit to purchasing $350 billion of American energy to offset the trade deficit.

Following his implementation of 20% tariffs on EU goods last week, which triggered significant market downturns, Trump indicated openness to negotiations while emphasizing his “America First” stance.

He also criticized EU product standards as “non-monetary barriers” designed to block American exports.

  • andallthat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    5 days ago

    More likely, they have been discussing about maybe starting official talks about what it would take to prepare, hypothetically.

    But that doesn’t mean there aren’t alternatives to most big tech services that could be setup quickly. I personally ditched Amazon (shop and video… AWS doesn’t depend on me personally) Meta and most of Google without sweating too much. Also, while convenient, none of their consumer tech is critical; we’ve lived without any of it until recently enough, so we could probably adapt to do without it for a while if we had to.

    The parts I think (and I’m not an expert by any means) where Europe is completely vulnerable are payment/banking systems and advanced electronics.

    On electronics, there’s also China, which isn’t a great alternative to depend on… But if Trump decided to weaponize SWIFT or the major credit cards, could he switch most of our banking system off?

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      6·
      5 days ago

      SWIFT is actually European - Belgian in fact, it’s just that the US has an outsized influence through the dollar. Visa and Mastercard has several EU alternatives, the only caveat with them is that each of them only works in their respective countries.

    • 0x0@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      I think SEPA mitigates that dependency on Visa/MasterCard. Not being an expert I think the main issue is banks resisting change (and most likely getting kickbacks).

      Electronics come from China and Taiwan anyway (i’m considering Intel/AMD CPUs as “advanced electronics” and even on that there are EU-babysteps towards advancing RISC-V).