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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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We're here joined by Maro Sefcovic, who is the Trade Commissioner for the European Union. We have so much to talk about, about the relationship with the United States, China, Mercosur, this Latin American trade deal that's supposed to be signed this weekend. We'll see if we get to that. Commissioner, thank you so much for joining us here.
I'd like to begin with the negotiations with the United States, because I think a lot of people are not very clear on where we are, particularly on the negotiations for steel and aluminum, those 50 percent tariffs. What progress has been made? Where are we right now?
I was very pleased with the outcome of the visit of my two principal counterparts, Secretary Latnik and Ambassador Greer. And I think we kind of reconfirmed also in front of our industry, because we had a meeting with CEOs that if it comes to steel and steel products, we are not each other's problem, because we export to each other really minimum amounts.
What unites us is that we really need to take care of all the capacities which are destroying, you know, the steel production in the US, but also in the EU. And I explain again that we adopted this very far-reaching safeguards if it comes to the imports of steel from third countries to the EU, which are kind of very much reflecting the measures which the US has undertaken several months ago.
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Chapter 2: What are the current challenges in EU-US trade negotiations?
And is there any other avenue to get those tariffs down other than basically diminishing European tech regulation?
I think that our regulation is adopted democratically by us through very thorough legislative process and therefore we are of course going to protect our tax sovereignty. What I heard from Secretary Lightning and Ambassador Greer was that they wanted to be treated fairly. So we had a lot of discussions. Are we aiming only at the US companies? Clear answer is no.
Just look at the companies which we are investigating or eventually finding. And are we kind of, you know, favoring the European companies in this case? Again, no. And I was just providing my both counterparts with the fact that a lot of these investigations are actually prompted by the complaints which are coming from American companies which are also located here in the EU.
They want to make sure that US companies are treated fairly, in non-discriminatory manner, when we would use more, I would say, the possibility of the settlement than fines.
Chapter 3: How is the EU addressing steel and aluminum tariffs?
And all these things have been also discussed with American partners, also by my colleagues, who are responsible for these sectors.
And speaking of sort of rare earth minerals, this obviously has been thrust into the sort of the conversation in a very sort of obvious way now by China. Are we getting closer, is Europe getting closer to getting a general license from China as the United States has?
Yes, I think that there I can say that we are in very close contacts with Foreign Trade Minister Wang Wentao and also his team. So we are communicating on different levels. We had here the team from China specializing on export controls like a couple of weeks ago.
And I think we are getting initial reports from our industry that they are getting these general licenses, but we need to have a little bit more granular information to evaluate the whole process.
But the fact that this idea was favorably received, that it seems that we are getting first general licenses, and also that the Chinese side was receptive to our arguments that the process as it was set up in April required too much of a very intrusive information, too many photographs, too much detail about the supply chains.
And I think that the general licensing could be one of the solutions how to address this issue.
Does that mean that there's going to be a regime that governs this sort of issue between the EU and China? Or is it still just kind of being hopeful that things don't change, basically?
I think that we kind of set up a kind of hotline with the Minister Wang Bentao for, I would say, priority cases. So we are talking on our level quite regularly, but especially our teams are in permanent contact because indeed we had moments over the last year where on my table I saw that pile of the letters from the worried CEOs of
different new companies about the lack of permanent magnets, lack of legacy chips and so on and so forth was really growing quite rapidly and we needed to address it. So now I think that we set up the good channels on working level and political level to address this issue. But it's a challenge. It brings additional instability into how the global supply chain has been working.
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