Spain Urges Talks on U.S. Tariffs

Summary

The Spanish gov­ern­ment has urged the European Commission to nego­ti­ate with the United States to sus­pend import tar­iffs on Spanish olive oil and table olives, call­ing for a ​“bal­anced and mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial solu­tion” to the trade dis­pute. The tar­iffs were imposed in response to ille­gal sub­si­dies pro­vided to the air­craft man­u­fac­turer Airbus by sev­eral European Union coun­tries, includ­ing Spain, lead­ing to a sig­nif­i­cant drop in Spanish olive oil exports to the U.S. and threat­en­ing Spain’s posi­tion as the top source of U.S. olive oil imports.

The Spanish gov­ern­ment has con­tacted the European Commission urg­ing it to open talks with the United States about sus­pend­ing import tar­iffs on Spanish olive oil and table olives.

In a let­ter sent by Reyes Maroto, the min­is­ter of indus­try, trade and tourism, to Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, Maroto called for a ​“bal­anced and mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial solu­tion” to the trade dis­pute.

“Restoring mutual trust is undoubt­edly one of the key objec­tives of our future trade pol­icy,” Maroto wrote. ​“We need to iden­tify the main areas for imme­di­ate action and build on mutual needs and shared com­mon goals in our respec­tive exter­nal trade and eco­nomic poli­cies.”

“Resolving our dis­putes would send a mes­sage of con­fi­dence to the pri­vate sec­tor, which asks that a nego­ti­ated solu­tion be sought between the two par­ties,” she added.

The announce­ment comes days after the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said it would not remove any of the tar­iffs imposed on a range of imports from the European Union back in October 2019.

“In light of the recent revi­sion, the U.S. Trade Representative has agreed with the affected U.S. indus­try that it is unnec­es­sary at this time to revise the action,” said William Busis, the deputy assis­tant USTR for mon­i­tor­ing and enforce­ment.

“The U.S. Trade Representative will con­tinue to con­sider the action taken in this inves­ti­ga­tion,” he added.

The tar­iffs came as the result of a rul­ing by the World Trade Organization, which found that four European Union coun­tries, includ­ing Spain, had ille­gally sub­si­dized the air­craft man­u­fac­turer Airbus, giv­ing it an unfair advan­tage over its American rival Boeing.

As a result, a 25-per­cent tar­iff was imposed on imports of pack­aged Spanish vir­gin and non-vir­gin olive oils and pit­ted and un-pit­ted green olives from Spain and France.

According to Spanish pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tions, the tar­iffs con­tinue to threaten Spain’s posi­tion as the num­ber one source of U.S. olive oil imports.

The Association of Young Farmers (Asaja) said that bot­tled Spanish olive oil exports to the U.S. fell by 81 per­cent in 2020, com­pared with 2019.

Asaja added that U.S. olive oil imports had grown by nearly 20 per­cent in the same period and called the devel­op­ment a ​“new fail­ure of European-Spanish diplo­macy.”

The over­all impact of the tar­iffs on Spanish olive oil imports to the U.S. remains to be seen as bulk olive oil was not included on the tar­iff list.

In August, Asaja reported that Spanish olive oil exports to the U.S. fell by 39 per­cent in the first half of 2020. However, data to com­pare all of 2020 with 2019 remain unavail­able.

Despite low trade fig­ures with the U.S., the International Olive Council’s lat­est data show that Spain will export a record-high 431,500 tons of olive oil to non-European Union coun­tries in the 2020/21 crop year.

• Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism
• Asaja