Trump rejects EU’s offer to drop car tariffs to zero

President Trump on Thursday refused an offer from the European Union to lower car tariffs to zero.

“It’s not good enough,” Trump said of the offer that came earlier in the day from Brussels during an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News.

“Their consumer habits are to buy their cars, not to buy our cars,” he said.

{mosads}Earlier, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told the European Parliament
that Europe would be willing to cut car tariffs to zero if the U.S was willing to do the same.

Trump again compared the EU to China, where he has ramped up a trade war with Beijing by imposing billions of tariffs on each other’s goods.

“The European Union is almost as bad as China, just smaller,” Trump told Bloomberg.

Besides imposing another $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports into the United States as early as next week, Trump has asked the Commerce Department to determine whether auto imports endanger national security.

Many in the auto industry likely expect that the Commerce Department will say that those foreign autos do put U.S. security at risk. They have argued that any move to apply an extra tax — upward of 25 percent — on cars from places like Germany will only hurt the U.S. auto industry. 

But whether Trump would move to impose tariffs on EU cars remains to be seen. As part of a joint agreement with the EU, both sides agreed to hold off on any new tariffs as long as they remain at the negotiating table.

Many foreign carmakers have manufacturing plants in the United States and employ thousands of U.S. workers.