Šefčovič: The agreement on tariffs with the USA is good news for car manufacturers, including those in Slovakia

Brussels – The EU and the United States aimed to find an agreement that would allow trade to continue, and the reduction of tariffs on cars will also help Slovakia. This was stated on Monday in an interview for Slovak media in Brussels by the European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič, as reported by TASR.

He specified that the European Commission wanted to preserve jobs in Europe, which were threatened by the previous 30 percent tariff proposal from Washington, and to seek solutions to all the complicated issues he has been negotiating with his American partners over the past six months.

When asked how the EU would respond to the agreed 15 percent export tariffs on its exports and what customs practices it would implement against Americans, Šefčovič reminded that the discussions on Sunday (July 27) were focused on how to balance the mutual trade balance, as the EU has the second largest trade surplus from the perspective of the USA (after China).

He stated that the import of American goods into the Union should remain at similar levels as before and under the same or slightly reduced customs conditions. He appreciated that in sensitive items such as steel or ferrous alloys, both sides are interested in creating some kind of union or bundle, within which they will trade at low or zero tariffs, but at the same time will jointly act against third countries that often flood Europe and the USA with illegally subsidized products from this area. Both sides are also interested in zero mutual customs burdens for the aviation industry and aircraft parts or for generics from the pharmaceutical industry.

We were looking for areas where tariffs could be reduced for individual products

“It was clear that if we want to maintain healthy trade relations without any dramatic fluctuations, we need to look for solutions to achieve a more balanced trade balance. We were looking for areas where tariffs could be reduced for individual products. Together with American representatives, we went through more than 2000 customs items over the past months and looked for opportunities where those tariffs could be reduced and where we could go to zero,” he explained.

He added that the agreed 15 percent customs ceiling is also a guarantee from the USA that there will be no further increase in tariffs, which is good news for the automotive and pharmaceutical industries and for semiconductor manufacturing. In these areas, which are important for the EU, it was expected that the American side would demand much higher tariffs than 15 percent.

“Overall, this compromise is the best we could negotiate at this time, and I believe it opens up space for closer cooperation in the future,” he described the situation.

The Slovak Commissioner emphasized that the agreement from Scotland between Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen is good news for the automotive industry, which was originally to be burdened with 27.5 percent tariffs on exports to the USA. He reminded that representatives of European car manufacturers claimed that with a 27.5 percent burden they were “bleeding,” as such a rate represented daily losses of millions of euros. “The 15 percent will certainly ease their current situation,” he stated. According to him, many European manufacturers who have their factories in the USA also benefit from the export of American cars to Europe, and the reduction of blanket tariffs on cars imported from the USA to zero will also be beneficial for them.

“We want the European automotive industry to remain competitive, to prevent possible relocations of these factories to the USA, and to maintain the entire value supply chain with spare parts, which employs tens of thousands of people even in Slovakia,” Šefčovič stated. (July 28)