BRUSSELS, April 7. /TASS/. The European Union will approve measures in response to the US duties on April 9, put their first package into effect on April 15, and impose the rest on May 15, EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said after an informal EU ministerial meeting on trade in Luxembourg.
"The world is set for April 9th, with the final list adopted on April 15, and duties on products will kick in on that day for the first set of measures and on May 15th for the remaining ones," he said, stressing that "while the EU remains open to and strongly prefers negotiations, we will not wait endlessly."
He declined to mention what goods would fall under the EU’s tariffs.
However, Italian Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani said that the European Commission had tapped the old "frozen" list in its pending measures, meaning the list of goods from the 2018 EU-US trade dispute between the first administration of US President Donald Trump and the European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker. Then the tariffs were quickly frozen, but the list remained.
Thus, the list will include meat, grains, wine, wood, clothing, including jeans, motorcycles, as well as vacuum cleaners, chewing gum, dental floss, toilet paper, and diamonds. The list may include whiskey, on which the EC intends to impose a 50% duty, to which Trump threatened a 200% tariff on all European alcohol, which would hit the agricultural sector of Italy, France and other southern EU countries especially hard.
The first package of EU tariffs is expected to affect 4.5 billion euros worth of US exports, and the second 18 billion euros.
