U.S. Considers New Tariffs on European Olives and Olive Oils

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) is review­ing exist­ing tar­iffs and con­sid­er­ing whether or not to impose new ones on goods imported from the European Union.

In October 2019, the World Trade Organization (WTO) gave the U.S. the right to impose $7.5 bil­lion worth of tar­iffs on imports from the E.U., as a result of ille­gal sub­si­dies pro­vided by the trad­ing bloc to the air­craft man­u­fac­turer Airbus.

Individually pack­aged olive oil imports from Spain and table olive imports from both France and Spain cur­rently face a 25 per­cent tar­iff. 

In a notice pub­lished last week, the USTR said these exist­ing import duties could be raised from their cur­rent level up to 100 per­cent.

Additionally, the USTR is con­sid­er­ing whether to impose tar­iffs on table olives and bulk and pack­aged olive oils from the rest of the trad­ing bloc, which includes Italy, Portugal, Greece, Croatia and Slovenia. 

U.S. offi­cials explained that tar­iffs on these coun­tries had pre­vi­ously been con­sid­ered and were now once again under con­sid­er­a­tion.

The total pack­age of tar­iffs that the USTR is now con­sid­er­ing is worth $3.1 bil­lion and would cover a range of other goods, includ­ing liquors, cheese, pork, pas­tries, cakes, hard­ware and clothes. 

While the USTR peri­od­i­cally reviews its list of cur­rent tar­iffs, this announce­ment comes right after the E.U. pub­lished its own list of poten­tial tar­iffs on U.S. goods. 

The trad­ing bloc is await­ing a rul­ing from the WTO on whether or not it can imple­ment these tar­iffs as a result of alleged ille­gal sub­si­dies pro­vided to the American air­craft man­u­fac­turer, Boeing. 

The WTO was expected to rule on the issue ear­lier this month, but delayed its deci­sion until at least September, cit­ing health con­cerns around the Covid-19 pan­demic. 

E.U. offi­cials imme­di­ately expressed their dis­ap­point­ment at the USTR’s announce­ment and have filed a for­mal com­plaint with the WTO about its deci­sion to delay the rul­ing.

The E.U. has long said it would rather nego­ti­ate an end to the tar­iffs than impose its own. However, observers doubt that an agree­ment could be reached before the WTO deci­sion is announced.

• United States Trade Representative
• Reuters