The European Union on Thursday said it’s delaying a first round of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. whiskey and other goods until April so it can realign its response and negotiate with the Trump administration.
The bloc said the countermeasures to President Trump’s steel and aluminum levies won’t proceed until mid-April instead of a phase-in approach that was set to begin March 31.
The move gives space for the EU to respond in a unified fashion, rather than in two stages, and refine its list of targets. Also, it provides extra time for negotiations with the U.S. over additional tariffs that Mr. Trump plans to unveil on April 2 to counter EU tariffs that he says have been enormous and unfair for years.
“This approach allows us to deliver a firm, proportionate, robust and well-calibrated response to the U.S. measures while minimizing potential negative impacts on EU producers and consumers,” said Olof Gill, a spokesman for the European Commission, which is the EU’s executive arm. “In the meantime, the EU continues to be ready to engage in constructive dialogue with the U.S. in order to seek a solution that avoids unnecessary harm to both economies.”
The White House is evaluating other countries’ tariffs and trade barriers on U.S. goods and plans to assign each nation a reciprocal tariff amount on their goods by Mr. Trump’s stated date of April 2.
Some countries might be able to negotiate down the tariffs, but the president insists he’ll produce some form of levy after the calculations. The plan is causing some hand-wringing among industry leaders and Wall Street investors, who fear economic disruptions and higher costs.
The EU had pledged to impose a 50% tariff on whiskey, a major product in red states like Kentucky, in response to Mr. Trump’s earlier tariffs on metal.
Mr. Trump threatened to impose a 200% tariff on European wine and alcohol products if they didn’t back down.
Some European leaders worried they were headed for a damaging cycle of tit-for-tat tariffs and wanted to be sure their measures were well calibrated.
“Our goal is to strike the right balance of products, taking into account the interests of EU producers, exporters and consumers,” Mr. Gill said. “The change represents a slight adjustment to the timeline and does not diminish the impact of our response.”
