Greece Pushes to Shield Two Iconic Agrifood Exports from 15% Tariff

Summary

Greece aims to exempt iconic food prod­ucts like olive oil and feta cheese from the 15 per­cent import tar­iff to the United States, agreed upon by the European Union and the U.S. The Greek gov­ern­ment is explor­ing ways to off­set the impact of the new tar­iff by seek­ing exemp­tions and expand­ing into other inter­na­tional mar­kets like India and the Middle East.

Greece is explor­ing ways to exempt some of its iconic food prod­ucts, such as olive oil, table olives, feta cheese and yogurt, from the 15 per­cent import tar­iff to the United States.

The sin­gle, all-inclu­sive tar­iff was agreed between the European Union and the United States last month for nearly all European prod­ucts exported to the world’s largest econ­omy.

The agreed tar­iff rate is half the 30 per­cent tar­iff that U.S. President Donald J. Trump had threat­ened to put on European imports before the deal was struck. 

However, it is higher than the ten-per­cent tar­iff in place until now under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Before Trump took office in January, European goods faced an aver­age 4.8 per­cent import tax in the U.S.

After the final­iza­tion of the 15 per­cent tar­iff, Greek gov­ern­ment offi­cials expressed their con­cern about the levy placed on Greek prod­ucts. 

“The [E.U.-U.S.] trade deal will avert a trade war with knock-on effects,” said the country’s finance min­is­ter, Kyriakos Pierrakakis. ​“However, Greece would pre­fer a lower tar­iff rate, ide­ally zero. The 15 per­cent tar­iff is lower than what was ini­tially planned, but it is still a bur­den.”

The United States is a top export des­ti­na­tion for Greek agri­food prod­ucts, par­tic­u­larly olive oil and table olives.

According to a study by the Greek Parliament’s Budget Office, over 25 years from 2000 to 2024, the aver­age export value of Greek table olives and olive oil to the U.S. stood at €100 mil­lion and €30 mil­lion a year, respec­tively. 

In 2024 alone, exports of Greek table olives to the American mar­ket were worth a record €212.2 mil­lion, whereas exports of olive oil brought a total of €76.3 mil­lion back to the coun­try.

To off­set any reper­cus­sions stem­ming from the new tar­iff scheme, the Greek gov­ern­ment is also con­tem­plat­ing fur­ther pen­e­trat­ing other, less explored inter­na­tional mar­kets, such as the grow­ing olive oil mar­ket of India and the Middle East.

Industry experts in Greece have also called for ini­tia­tives to pro­tect the coun­try’s high-value-added prod­ucts, such as table olives and olive oil, from the impact of the new tar­iff regime. 

Other gov­ern­ment offi­cials said that Greece should seek an exemp­tion from the 15-per­cent import tar­iff to the U.S. They argued that the coun­try can­not rely entirely on the deci­sions made in Brussels, where each E.U. mem­ber coun­try will push for a tar­iff exemp­tion for its prod­ucts.

In 2019, dur­ing the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Greek olives and olive oil were exempted from the 25-per­cent tar­iff rate imposed on European imports to the U.S. in the con­text of the Airbus-Boeing dis­pute. 

Among other sig­nif­i­cant European pro­duc­ers, Italian table olives and olive oil were also handed a tar­iff exemp­tion, whereas sim­i­lar prod­ucts from Spain were bur­dened with the extra import levy.

While the U.S. has gone ahead with the new 15 per­cent import tar­iff, the European Union has announced that the planned retal­ia­tory tar­iffs, worth €93 bil­lion, on U.S. prod­ucts such as soy­beans, cars, air­craft and whiskey set to take effect on August 7^th have been sus­pended for six months to allow for fur­ther nego­ti­a­tions between the two sides.

According to Cinzia Alcidi from the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, trade agree­ments usu­ally take between 18 and 24 months of bilat­eral nego­ti­a­tions to final­ize.

“To give some cer­tainty to the indus­try and pri­vate sec­tors now, the 15 per­cent blan­ket tar­iff will apply – but then there will be efforts to get some goods a dif­fer­ent deal,” Alcidi said.

• BBC News
• Council on Foreign Relations