The US has held out the prospect of a partial trade deal with the EU in the next two months as part of detente in transatlantic commercial relations. After a meeting in Brussels on Monday with Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU trade commissioner, the office of US trade representative Robert Lighthizer said that “an early harvest in the area of technical barriers to trade” could be reaped as early as November.
Financial Times
He was referring to a possible deal to reduce regulatory hurdles that hamper commercial exchanges across the Atlantic, such as conflicting standards on car safety, medical devices and pharmaceuticals, which had been the subject of lengthy negotiations between the Obama administration and officials in Brussels. Although a full trade deal to slash tariffs and tackle sensitive sectors such as agriculture and financial services between the US and the EU remains far off, the apparent progress yesterday should at least limit the risk of a new flare-up in trade tensions in the coming months.
In late July, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, agreed a truce with Donald Trump, the US president, in an effort to ease friction following the US decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports — and its threat to do the same with cars. Ms Malmstrom said that the meeting with Mr Lighthizer was a “first opportunity” to build on that deal. “We discussed how to move forward and identify priorities on both sides, and how to achieve concrete results in the short to medium term,” she wrote on Twitter. “Lots of work remains this autumn.”
The US and the EU, along with Japan, have also stepped up talks on how to tackle some of the biggest concerns they have related to Chinese trade policy, in an attempt to see if they can forge a common front to put pressure on Beijing.
