US Trade Rep: New Tariffs Compatible with Turnberry Deal

PARIS — Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Thursday that proposed new U.S. tariffs on European exports are compatible with the transatlantic trade deal struck last summer at President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.

“The Turnberry agreement says that the European Union agrees and acknowledges that the United States can impose tariffs up to a certain level,” Greer said in Paris on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“We understand that a deal is a deal. We want to make sure that we’re able to resolve the trading practices that are identified as problematic in our investigations and we are going to take into account the Turnberry deal, of course, because we believe that the Turnberry deal addresses a lot of these issues,” he added.

The Trump administration proposed a new 10 percent tariff Tuesday, citing concerns that the European Union had failed to ban the import of goods made using forced labor, drawing a rebuke from the European Commission, which called the move unjustified.

The tariffs, proposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, would supersede interim duties implemented under another authority of the same act that are due to expire in July. The interim tariffs themselves replaced Trump’s original emergency tariffs, which were struck down in February by the U.S. Supreme Court and formed the basis of the Turnberry accord.

In parallel, under another Section 301 investigation launched this spring, the U.S. could impose more tariffs over concerns about excess manufacturing capacity in 16 economies including China, the EU and Japan.

Greer said a decision would come in the excess capacity probe in “a matter of weeks,” noting that it was “a complex investigation.”

Tariff ceiling

Washington’s top trade official suggested that tariffs imposed under the forced labor and excess capacity probes could comply with a 15 percent tariff ceiling agreed in Turnberry. That deal was spelled out in a joint statement last August.

“We believe that there’s room to accommodate that deal within the context of what we’re doing, provided that the European Union delivers on the Turnberry deal,” added Greer, who met EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič in Paris on Wednesday.

Justifying the proposed new tariff, the USTR noted this week that the EU’s own forced labor regulation would only apply from Dec. 2027.

Greer made clear that early implementation of those new rules wouldn’t automatically spare the EU from tariffs.

“Once it is implemented, that’s a positive step,” Greer said. “We really want to see real evidence, certainly of a law being implemented, but especially of it being effectively enforced, and I think it will take some time for countries to demonstrate that.”

Greer argued that U.S. companies, which have to comply with strict anti-forced labor rules, are penalized when competing with foreign companies that are subject to softer rules.

“Our competitors in other countries don’t have those same burdens,” he said. “They don’t have an expectation that they need to control for this to the same extent that’s required by U.S. laws.”

This report has been updated.