EU Member States have voted in favour of the European Commission's proposal to introduce trade countermeasures against the United States.
And this is how it is supposed to happen. By vote of democratic representative body. Not by President of the United States or President of the Commission of European Union body their sole decision being able to decide such stuff.
By the way there is chance this whole thing in USA is unconstitutional. Since the taxing power is Congresses. POTUS can only use it where Congress has delegate power to POTUS via law.
Well the law Trump is citing talks of POTUS having right to issue economic sanctions in case foreign power threatens USA in major way. POTUS declares emergency. However the law doesn't mention tariffs. Rather whole thing is based on Whitehouse creatively interpreting, that well tariffing is maybe kinda sanction.
Which is crazy to me is not the main talking point. It is "how much the rates are and how badly calculated those are". When it should be " International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn't give you power to do that. It allows you to sanction and ban exports and so on. It does not give power to tariff. For that there is different international trade regulatory law. However that law sets strict procedure and due diligence limits. Hey Whitehouse why are you doing unconstitutional thing".
That should be every journalists question on interview. Not will he, won't he. It should be "This is illegal, right? The act gives no taxing powers. You are taxing Americans without power to do so. IEEPA doesn't authorize this."
If you have a Republican representative, now would be the time to remind them of their power and responsibility in this situation.
This is on the GOP in congress.
The EU country leaders are as representative as the US President. The real democracy would be letting the EU parlament vote.
good, there is no other way to respond to Trump
It sounds like this is specifically in response to the aluminum and steel tariffs that were imposed by Trump back in early February.
My own impression --- this from an American perspective --- is that the necessity for some kind of protection for these industries is not incredibly controversial. That is, they are strategic goods, there is a positive externality on national security grounds associated with having access to secure production, and as the release above points out, prior, more-limited tariffs had resulted in Chinese producers routing goods around those tariffs. China has taken over a very high percentage of global production in past years of at least steel; I have not checked aluminum.
My guess is that, while specific levels of protection might change, the US will probably seek to ensure some level of domestic or at least secure production. There might not be specifically 25% tariffs, but some form of protection will remain, regardless of administration.
I haven't looked at the specific countertariffs proposed being imposed by the EC, and the article does not reference them, but if they amount to being on steel and aluminum because the EU similarly wants domestic capacity for similar reasons, that probably makes sense.
Note that the Trump administration has also, more-recently, imposed tariffs on other things, and these are considerably more controversial and wide-ranging. This includes autos, for which --- at least based on my past reading --- claims of a national security externality are probably a lot less credible, and domestic political pressures are a lot more likely. Then, even moreso, the more-recent "all goods" tariffs, the ones with a "10% baseline". If these last tariffs remain in place for any extended period of time, and if no form of exception is negotiated --- I don't know to what extent Musk's mentioned "0% tariff trade agreement" is based on actual administration goals --- my guess is that there is likely to be considerably broader dispute than over steel and aluminum tariffs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_second_Trump_administration
When he specifically asked them not to?