The European Union’s (EU's) trade chief warned that only about a month remains to resolve a metals dispute with the US, and failure to do so means new EU tariffs will hit American products on Dec. 1.
“Allowing for internal decision-making procedures in the EU, we really need an agreement already by the beginning of November,” EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said Tuesday on Bloomberg Television.
Dombrovskis is meeting with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai to discuss the conflict that started in 2018 when the Trump administration imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium from the bloc.
“We are now working very intensively to resolve this Trump-era steel and aluminium dispute,” Dombrovskis said. “Time is, in a sense, running out.”
Later Tuesday, Dombrovskis told reporters that the EU is open to looking at steel and aluminium separately, but that both metals need to be resolved in the same timeline.