The commercial tensions between the United States and the European Union they are reaching a new critical point: after the announcement of duties of the 25% On European cars by the Trump administration and the prospect that new measures are announced soon, Brussels is evaluating a more incisive response. In recent weeks, the EU has applied duties on American assets for an amount of 26 billion euros: a clear and direct “response” to the duties applied by the US on steel and aluminum from the old continent. Given the climate far from lying between Europe and the US, however, there is a good probability that the duties war Continue. According to what is reported by Financial Times In a recent article, the European Union would be preparing to affect the exports of US services and, in this strategy, some would return Measures that would go against large American technological companiesthe so -called Big tech.
Because the EU could respond to the US duties by hitting the big tech and how
In the 2023 The United States they recorded a surplus of 109 billion euros in services paid towards the EU, while they are in deficit for 157 billion in assets. This makes services a vulnerable sector, which could be used by Brussels as a commercial “weapon”. And since many of these services are provided by Big tech – Like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft – they are companies like these, already put to the test from Dma (Digital Markets Act) and from DSA (Digital Services Act), to be struck more. they generate enormous profits from the European market. Targeted measures could reduce their ability to operate in Europe or increase their costs, thus reducing the American competitive advantage in the digital services sector.
In Brussels there is also discussion of the use of the Anti-Coetwork tool or ACI (Anti-Coercion Instrument), a mechanism that would allow drastic measures such as the revocation of patents or Restrictions on the financial activities of American companies. Another hypothesis is theExclusion of companies such as Starlink from European government contracts. The satellite service of Elon Musk It is already under examination in some Member States (including Italy), and its exclusion would be a strong signal towards the United States. Although the final objective of the EU is negotiating a fairer commercial agreement, the pressure exerted with these and other measures could be essential to bring the USA back to the negotiation table.
The difficulties in adopting a unanimous strategy against the duties announced by Trump
In all this EU Member States are not unanimous on the strategy to be adopted And this could hinder the adoption of the measures against the USA we talked about above. In fact, the qualified majority of the Member States is needed to make sure that the measures developed by the European Commission can be implemented. In the meantime, the European Commission has postponed the application of the measures against some goods – such as jeans and motorcycles – al April 12thwaiting for further discussions with the Member States. This still leaves room for a possible compromise with Washington, but if the tensions were persisted, the EU could find itself forced to implement more severe measures, hitting the big tech and the service sector to respond to the new American offensive. We will see.
