Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during a recent interview that there is still “plenty of horse-trading left to do” when it comes to certain aspects of the trade framework between the U.S. and the European Union (EU).
“And do I expect to continue to be talking to the European Commission’s trade people? Yeah, they called me this morning to talk about, what are other things to talk about, digital services, taxes and the attack on our tech companies. That is going to be on the table. It wasn’t on the table today,” Lutnick said during his Tuesday appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“There are other things that they would like, like steel and aluminum that were not included in this deal, that will be on the table. There’s plenty of horse-trading still to do, but the fundamentals of their $20 trillion economy are set. We sell to them without a tariff. They sell to us for 15 percent, but they protect themselves on autos, they protect themselves on pharma. They protect themselves on semiconductors.”
President Trump and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined a trade deal over the weekend, with most EU goods being hit with a 15 percent tariff. Trump said the EU will buy $750 billion in American energy and the EU agreed to invest $600 billion into the U.S.
Previously, Trump threatened to impose a 30 percent tariff on EU goods. The U.S.-EU trade pact was criticized by France as an act of “submission” by the EU.
Lutnick said “protections” on automobiles, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors were “fundamental” for the European Commission and argued that “anybody who picks on them is going to learn over the next two weeks why the people who did that deal were really smart to get the deal done with Donald Trump.”
