Yesterday at the White House, President Donald Trump praised the trade deal he struck with the EU telling the press that the new EU–US agreement would open Europe to American imports. He claimed that previously, Europe had been closed to U.S. products, particularly cars and agricultural goods.
This does not reflect the reality of the previous EU-US trade relationship. Despite the fact that the US had a trade deficit of goods with the EU, this does not mean that the EU did not import US products. In fact the situation was actually on the contrary. Both US car and agriculture imports to the EU increased over the last ten years.
According to the European Commission, the total volume of US agriculture imports into the EU was at €9.59 billion in 2020, €9.25 billion in 2021, €12.26 billion in 2022, €11.68 billion in 2023 and €11.95 billion in 2024, increasing by an average of 5.77% per year by around €590 million. The imports of US cars to the EU increased on a similar trend, increasing from €6 billion in 2014 to a total of €8.4 billion in 2024 according to the EU Commission.
In addition to rising US car and agriculture imports, EU member states have been increasing their purchases of US weapons sales. The US has also become the major supplier of LNG to Europe more than doubling its gas exports to the EU from 2021. Last year alone the EU purchased up to €16.2 billion in US gas (Trump’s demands to purchase more than €200 billion is unrealistic).
It is unclear whether the EU will retain its previous 10% tariff on US cars. Previously, the US tariffed EU cars up to 2.5% and vans and trucks up to 25% prompting European companies such as Daimler to assemble their trucks in the US.
On the other hand, the agricultural market is much more complex with specific products having distinct tariffs, rules and regulations and it is also unclear how the new trade regime on agriculture will unfold.
For further reading on US tariffs and the EU-US trade deal you can read this article.
Newsroom
Leave a Reply