French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that the reduction of US tariffs on the EU to 10 percent was a “fragile pause”, and Europe must therefore “mobilise all available levers to protect itself”.
“With the European Commission, we must show ourselves as strong: Europe must continue to work on all the necessary counter-measures,” Macron said on X after a surprise announcement by US President Donald Trump that he was pausing tariff hikes targeting the European Union.
The EU was hit with a 20 percent rate as part of Trump’s universal tariffs and the commission has been preparing its response, although Brussels has made it clear it would prefer to avoid retaliation.
Trump announced the punishing tariffs last week, throwing global markets into chaos, then announced on Wednesday that he was halting the measures for almost all economies for 90 days.
The 27-nation EU is among dozens of economies including Japan — but not China — that now face a baseline tariff rate of 10 percent instead.
Macron said the EU had to avoid product “flows from third countries”, which could “unbalance our market”.
Macron said the European Commission’s objective was “simple: to negotiate to remove these unfair tariffs and obtain a balanced agreement, without asymmetries,” as this three-month pause represents “90 days of uncertainty for all our businesses, on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.”
“We are right to fight: jobs and the lives of our countries are at stake,” he said.