Green light from the European Commission to the decision to apply additional duties to a series of imports from the United States in response to US tariffs against steel and aluminum, taken last Friday, June 1st. It is expected that the formal procedure in coordination with the states will be completed before the end of the month and that the new duties are applied from July. The European duties, which will affect products from motorcycles to boats, from peanut butter to textiles to jeans, will have to rebalance the damage suffered by the EU which Brussels estimates at 6,4 billion (at 2017 export values).
The rebalancing rights decided by the European Union, within the framework of the rules of the World Trade Organization, however, they are worth only 2,8 billion. The rebalancing of the remaining part (3,6 billion) will take place later within three years or after a positive evaluation in the framework of the settlement of the WTO dispute.
Initially the US had decided to postpone the adoption of new tariffs against the EU compared to what was established for Canada and Mexico, moving the deadline precisely to 1 June. The goal was to take advantage of these two months to find an agreement that would set precise quotas and limits on steel and aluminum imports, in the wake of the agreements already reached with South Korea, Australia, Argentina and Brazil.
