German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned the Trump administration that hitting auto imports with new tariffs would have dire consequences.
”We now have tariffs on aluminum and steel and we have a discussion that is far more serious,” Merkel told German lawmakers on Wednesday. “This is taking on the contours of a trade conflict — I don’t want to use words that go any further.
It’s worth every effort to try and defuse this so that this conflict does not become a war.’’
President Donald Trump has threatened to place a 20% tariff on all European cars coming to the United States if the European Union doesn’t remove its own trade barriers.
Targeting cars would dramatically raise the stakes in the spat between Europe and its biggest trading partner. EU-US trade in goods and services is worth more than €1 trillion euros ($1.2 trillion) each year.
via CNN