The European Union is considering hitting 10.2 billion euros ($11.5 billion) of U.S. goods ranging from handbags to helicopters with retaliatory tariffs in a dispute over subsidies to Boeing, according to a draft list seen by Bloomberg News.
The plan follows a U.S. threat to target $11 billion of European goods ranging from helicopters to cheeses with import duties to counter state aid to Airbus. Both moves stem from parallel, 14-year-old disputes at the World Trade Organization over market-distorting support for aircraft makers.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, outlined its retaliation plan to trade experts from the bloc’s national governments on Friday in Brussels, an official said on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were behind closed doors.
The WTO will ultimately determine the amounts of imports that both sides would be allowed to target in the two cases. On April 9, the commission dubbed the U.S. aim of hitting $11 billion of imports from the EU “greatly exaggerated.”
The renewed transatlantic wrangling over aviation subsidies heightens EU-U.S. trade tensions prompted by President Donald Trump’s “America First” protectionism, especially his controversial duties on foreign steel and aluminum based on national-security grounds and his threat to apply automotive levies on the same basis.
An escalation of transatlantic commercial tensions would in turn add risks to a global economy already suffering from Trump’s bigger trade war with China. In a Twitter post on April 10, Trump called the EU “a brutal trading partner.”
So far, the EU has applied tit-for-tat tariffs on 2.8 billion euros of American goods in response to Trump’s metal duties and threatened to hit a further 20 billion euros of U.S. products with levies should Washington restrict automotive imports.
The list of U.S. goods on the commission’s draft retaliation list in the Boeing-aid case also includes video-game consoles, fitness equipment, casino game tables, tobacco, vodka, orange juice and a range of foods including chocolate, ketchup and frozen lobster.
