Discount Not Discourse to Boost U.S. Soy Sales to EU

“This was a good, constructive meeting”, he added…

Trump and Juncker said talks would seek to “resolve” US tariffs on steel and aluminum and Europe’s retaliatory duties, a step back from Trump’s import protections for USA metal producers.

A joint statement delivered by Trump, with Juncker standing by his side on the White House south lawn, said that the two sides would work towards “zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods”.

President Donald Trump said in Iowa on Thursday that he just opened up the European market to USA farmers. “Sounds like Trump has caved in on his ridiculous tariffs to the European Union”. Shares in Fiat (FCHA.MI), Porsche (PSHG_p.DE), Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and BMW (BMWG.DE) all rose by between 2 and 5 percent.

Germany’s economy minister Peter Altmaier immediately hailed the news on Twitter, posting: “Breakthrough achieved that can avoid trade war and save millions of jobs!”

What the Europeans are really after, though, is deescalation before Trump takes the fateful step of imposing 25 percent tariffs on auto imports.

Perhaps Trump thinks that because he can impose tariffs on more goods than the Europeans, the USA will win the game. It also doesn’t mean that either the tariffs that the President imposed on steel and aluminum from the European Union or the retaliatory tariffs that the E.U. placed on American products including denim, motorcycles, bourbon, and other products, will be lifted any time soon.

“The truth of it is, the protectionist European Union has now been forced by Trump into taking an approach that is more towards free trade and fair trade”.

What he failed to mention (aside from the fact that the official text includes no formal commitments from the EU) is that this is unlikely to make a dent in America’s lost trade with its largest soybean market: China.

While the EU has created a single market and customs union among its own members, the EU tends to function as an economic “fortress Europe” wherein genuine free trade agreements are hard to secure and when they are secured, they are usually with countries whose economies are so qualitatively similar that the deals do not make a substantial difference to either side. “The solutions set out go in the right direction but a healthy dose of skepticism remains”.

“Auto tariffs are looming unless the European Union buys more US stuff and does other things Trump demands”, he said. In return for soybeans, Trump agreed to halt further tariffs while negotiations were ongoing, losing key leverage.

A few other important EU-U.S. issues were concluded including one within the energy sector that will have huge importance for Ukraine: The EU promised to buy more liquefied natural gas from the U.S. diversifying EU’s energy supply putting pressure on Russia’s North Stream-2 project.

“Now it’s about putting meat on the bones of the agreement and quickly beginning negotiations”, said Bernhard Mattes, the VDA German auto association president. Aides must prepare a clip book for Trump “filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful”, according to a report by VICE News.