European lawmakers on Wednesday suspended the approval of the trade deal that the European Union and U.S. agreed in July.
In a statement Wednesday, European Parliament member Bernd Lange, and INTA chair on EU-US trade relations, said the recent plans by President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of between 10% and 25% on European nations go against the terms of the trade pact.
Referring to Trump’s address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Lange said: “I guess he didn’t revise his position. He wants to have Greenland as part of the United States as quick as possible.”
In his speech, the president called for “immediate negotiations” on the acquisition of the Arctic territory.
Trump ruled out the use of military force in his speech, a commitment Lange described as a “small positive element.”
However, Lange said the proposed 10% to 25% tariffs remain on the table, adding that, until the threat of them is over, “there will be no possibility of compromise.”
“We will hold on the procedure … until there is clarity regarding Greenland and the threats,” he said.
“There was a breaking of the Scotland deal by President Trump,” Lange said, referring to the trade pact agreed by the EU and the U.S. at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort last year.
Lange said Trump is “using tariffs as an instrument of political pressure” as a way to buy Greenland, and described the move as “an attack against the economic and territorial sovereignty of the European Union.”
He added that the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, or INTA, would on Monday discuss the use of the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, or ACI — a far-reaching measure variously described as a “trade bazooka” — which would allow the EU to substantially restrict U.S. companies’ access to its single market, block them from tenders, reduce the flow of goods and capital, and curb foreign direct investment in the bloc.
“This was created exactly for such a case when a foreign country [uses] tariffs and investment for political and coercive pressure,” Lange said of the ACI.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC that the EU had “failed to implement its commitments under the deal despite rapid US moves to reduce its tariffs on the EU last year.
“This move by the European Parliament introduces further delay. The United States and EU have – and will always have – a number of foreign policy and economic matters that fall outside the four corners of the deal. If the United States can compartmentalize important yet unrelated matters, the EU should not use them as excuses for noncompliance,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel told CNBC that he hoped Trump would reverse his stance, calling the trans-Atlantic tensions a “very problematic situation.”
Nagel, a governing council member of the European Central Bank, acknowledged that the tariff threat will likely have “some spillover” to monetary policy in the region.
Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Nagel said the tariff dispute could “maybe” be a game changer for monetary policy in the euro zone, which he said was still on “a good path.”
“I still have the hope that we can find a solution, a joint understanding,” Nagel added.
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