While everyone expects an appeasement in the trade war between China and the United States, Trump has designated his new battlefield: Europe.
Indeed, he wants to introduce import taxes on certain European products such as cheese, wine, airplanes, helicopters, motorcycles, cars, ...
In doing so, the US government wants to put pressure on Europe in order to stop the subsidies that some European companies benefit. This was emphasized by the US Trade Representative Robert Lightizer in his statement: "Our ultimate goal is to reach an agreement with the EU to end all subsidies to commercial aircraft, which are against the WTO rules. When the EU puts an end to these harmful subsidies, the import US fees will can be lifted ".
Robert Lightizer directly targets the company Airbus which receives public aid and undermine the interests of the United States (and especially Boeing). As a reminder, the WTO had requested in 2018 the abolition of the subsidies enjoyed by Airbus but this request had not been followed by the EU.
To each president his war, Bush had Afghanistan, Obama Iraq and Syria, Trump rather aims at him international trade ...
Markets reacted rather calmly and are waiting for more information on import "sanctions". It must be said that for the past two years we have been hearing these threats of new taxes ...
The Euro strengthened slightly against the US Dollar yesterday. Indeed, the EURUSD price went from 1.1220 to 1.1275 and the ounce of gold (in USD), slightly higher, stabilizes above $ 1300 while it was at $ 1292 at the opening.