It is a very concrete threat. On July 12, Donald Trump announced that customs duties of 30 % would be applied on August 1 to all imports from the European Union (EU). While discussions are still underway to try to find an agreement, a new regulation adopted in Europe could seriously impact American giants. Let’s take stock.
The US ultimate weapon
In 2024, the Member States approved the anti-coercion instrument (ACI). This device allows the EU to reply when a country imposes economic pressure it and it is particularly suitable for the present situation.
Concretely, American companies could thus lose access to certain public markets or see some of their projects on the Old Continent called into question. Awarded authorizations can also be deleted. Clearly, everything would be set up to look for noise, without a tax or customs duties are applied to them.
This is undoubtedly a way for the EU to prevent consumers from being affected by relevant business retaliation measures, even if the latter could also choose to impact additional costs on their customers within the Member States.
These measures would affect lots of whips of American technology services and companies and we can clearly imagine that the tension would still mount a notch between the two blocks if the ACI was put in place. Suffice to say that giants like Netflix, Google, Apple, Amazon, or Disney and Microsoft would not see this initiative with a good eye.
Tergainstal Europe
For the time being, France seems to support an application of these measures if the discussions with Washington were to fail. This is in any case what Benjamin Haddad, Minister responsible for European Affairs explained to Bloomberg :
In this negotiation, you must show strength, strength, unity and determination. We can go further. (It refers to the countermeasures announced by the European Commission aimed at nearly 100 billion euros in American trade (Editor’s note).
On the side of the European executive, we delay. Thus, the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, judges that the ACI is only there “For exceptional situations” and that we “Are not yet there”. Likewise, this radical weapon can only be activated at the end of several months of procedure. A long time which does not seem at all adapted to daily blood blows and the instability which is to put the side of the American president.
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