French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged on Friday that he left Washington after talks this week with President Donald Trump with scant hope that the European Union would avoid U.S. trade tariffs.
Macron said the Trump administration’s trade strategy – and particularly its understanding of value-added taxes – was flawed.
Two days after Macron mixed flattery with firmness during his White House meeting with Trump, the U.S. president said his administration would announce a 25% tariff on all imports from the
European Union. Trump said the bloc had been created to “screw” the United States.
“I left with very little hope,” Macron told reporters in the Portuguese city of Porto.
“There are, I believe, misunderstandings, design problems in the commercial approach proposed by this administration,” Macron added. “Central to their reasoning is that our taxes on consumption, in particular the value added tax, are a tariff, which is factually false.”
Speaking alongside Macron, Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro reiterated his call for dialogue with Washington, but said: “Europe will have to respond to an increase in tariffs in a similar way.”
Montenegro added that he regretted that economies and blocs not targeted by inflationary tariffs will be the ones who benefit from the trade tensions, rather than the United States or European Union.
The European Commission said on Wednesday that it will react “firmly and immediately against unjustified barriers to free and fair trade.”