The European Union (EU) will have to buy 350 billion US dollars’ worth of American energy to avoid Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, the US president said late Monday, the 7th of April, rejecting Brussels’ offer of “zero-for-zero” tariffs on cars and industrial goods, reports Politico.
Trump’s comments at a White House press conference were in response to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s statement earlier on Monday that the EU had offered to lift the bloc’s tariffs on US imports of cars and manufactured goods if Trump would do the same.
Asked by a reporter whether this offer would be enough to make him agree, Trump replied: “No, it is not.”
“We have a deficit of 350 billion dollars with the European Union and that will disappear quickly,” Trump said. “One of the ways it can go away quickly and easily is if they have to buy our energy from us… they can buy, we can clear 350 billion dollars in one week. They have to buy and commit to buy a like amount of energy.”
Von der Leyen’s offer came after Trump last week imposed tariffs of 20% on the EU and at least 10% on other trading partners. In response, financial markets around the world lost trillions of dollars in value, and European shares on Monday saw their biggest one-day drop since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“A lot of people are saying: “Oh, it doesn’t mean anything that there is a surplus.” I think it means a lot. It’s almost like a profit or loss statement,” Trump said.
The President spoke in the Oval Office on Monday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Washington to negotiate with Trump and seek relief from US tariffs. In comments to the press after the meeting, the US President doubled down on his criticism of the EU but said he was ready to strike a deal with the bloc as long as it committed to reducing its trade deficit with the US by buying more American energy.
The idea of buying US energy to avoid tariffs is not new. Almost immediately after Trump’s re-election, von der Leyen proposed opening negotiations to buy more American liquefied natural gas (LNG). But Politico reported then that the US, in response, has not offered any clarity on how the deal might go through.
Asked on Monday whether the global tariffs he has imposed are just a pressure or whether they will remain in the long term, Trump replied that they could be permanent, but that negotiations are also possible because the US wants more than just tariffs.
“If we can get a really fair deal that benefits the US and not others, then America is going to come first. At the moment, America comes first,” he added.
Later in the press conference, Trump was asked by a journalist if there were countries on his list that he thought were making progress towards cutting tariffs, and Trump replied that the EU was. He said that “as badly as they have treated us, they have basically lowered their tariffs on cars. I think they reduced them to 2.5, and I heard maybe zero.”
But Trump also urged the EU to soften its safety standards, calling them “non-monetary tariffs” that make it harder to import US goods.
He said such rules were designed to block imports of American products and vowed to crack down on them.
Pointing to the reasons behind Trump’s actions, the President recalled a time when US tariffs were very high.
“You know, our country was the strongest from 1870 to 1913,” Trump said. “You know why? It was all about tariffs. We had no income tax. Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea, let’s tax the people of our country, not the foreign countries that are ripping off our country.”