Šefčovič: The EU and the USA want to reach a satisfactory trade agreement by July 9

Brussels – The European Union (EU) and the United States want to make use of every day until July 9 to find a satisfactory mutual agreement in the area of trade and customs policy. In an interview with the TASR news agency, European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maroš Šefčovič stated this in Brussels.

According to him, negotiations on trade policy and tariffs with the American side are taking place “essentially every day” and are extremely complicated.

“We are looking for solutions that would provide the United States with sufficient options to address their most pressing issue of the trade deficit in goods. We are looking at individual tariff items, and from the EU side, we want this agreement to be as balanced as possible. It takes a lot of time; it is truly a painstaking job,” he explained.

He specified that the effort is to achieve more significant progress regarding “horizontal issues,” meaning how to resolve questions of exporting and importing cars, or how to deal with tariffs on steel and aluminum.

“Here we have repeatedly confirmed with the American side that we are not the problem for each other; the problem is the excess capacity that mainly comes from Asian countries,” Šefčovič pointed out.

He added that both sides are also analyzing the situation on how to address the issue of trading in high-quality chips. According to him, a major topic for the EU is also the pharmaceutical industry, where the Union has a very positive trade balance with the USA.

“These are absolutely key topics for the European industry, for European exporters and entrepreneurs. These are topics where I would have liked to see more emphatic progress at this time, but we must proceed step by step, and we will certainly make use of every day until the end of the period we have set as a milestone, which is July 9,” Šefčovič assessed. (June 13)