EU Rejects US Offer to Cut Tariffs if it Pulls Away From China

The European Union has dismissed calls from the US to reduce trade ties with China and make major changes to its food safety standards to suit American farmers, according to a report by the Irish Times, which cited senior sources in Dublin and Brussels.

It said the chances of a trade agreement between the US and EU “will be hard to reach” after the imposition of tariffs by the Trump Administration and revealing some of the goals it would like to achieve.

Representatives of the EU’s 27 states were briefed on talks between European trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic and US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that took place in Washington DC on Monday.

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A spokesman for European Commission, which sets the EU’s trade policy, said the Union’s high food safety standards were sacrosant and would not be put on the table in any negotiations with the US or anyone else.

EU keen to de-risk, not decouple

“Brussels also played down the prospect of the EU cutting ties with China in order to pave the way for a trade deal with the US. EU officials cite the bloc’s intention to ‘de-risk’ its relations with China – a long-time objective of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen – but say the US’s requirement of “decoupling” is not viable,” the report said.

An earlier report said talks between Irish officials and the US “suggest that the overall US strategy is to decouple from China, and that any country who wishes to have a trade deal with the US will also have to distance itself from Beijing,” the paper said.

That allegation was supported by the Wall Street Journal, which said on Tuesday that the Trump Administration plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure US trading partners to limit their dealings with China, citing people with knowledge of the conversations.

US officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries and prevent Chinese firms from being located in their territories to avoid US tariffs, the report said.

However, EU officials have long-standing concerns about China’s support for Russia, its stance on Taiwan, human rights, as well as its huge industrial overcapacity and ‘unfair’ trade practices.

Sefcovic told EU trade ministers on Monday there was a serious risk of China flooding European markets with cheap goods, which has led to the EU putting extra surveillance measures in place.

China’s exports to the EU exceeded imports from the bloc by more than 300 billion euros in 2024, The Guardian said, citing EU data, while noting that the trade imbalance was nearly twice as large as when Trump first imposed tariffs in 2018.

Trump urged to ‘stop whining’

Meanwhile, China’s state media have called for Trump to “stop whining,” as other news agencies report that China is open to talks with the US if it shows respect – a position that is hardly surprising given Beijing’s distaste for remarks by President Trump that China is “ripping is us off.”

An editorial in the China Daily on Wednesday said Trump’s constant rip-off refrain was a “fabricated premise.”

“The preoccupation with trade deficits stems from a warped idea that they are proof that the US has been exploited by other countries. This has also made the US president and his trade advisers wrongly claim that the current rules governing global trade have put the US at a distinct disadvantage.

“This is contrary to the belief of mainstream economists that a trade deficit simply means a country is importing more goods and services from a given country than it is exporting to that market, and has nothing to do with the state of a country’s economic health.”

‘What about service sector trade?’

The editorial said while the US was putting the spotlight on surging deficits in the US’s trade of goods with other countries, it “has deliberately ignored the fact that the US sells far more services than it buys from other countries” – and that “the US’s service sector enjoys a trade surplus with almost every trading partner around the world,” including China and the European Union.

“The service sector includes retailers, software, internet and telecom providers, movie studios, as well as healthcare providers, law firms and accounting agencies.

“In 2023, US services exports were worth more than $1 trillion, accounting for 13% of the global total, and they expanded a further 8% last year, according to the World Trade Organization,” it said.

“The US is not getting ripped off by anybody. The problem is the US has been living beyond its means for decades. It consumes more than it produces. It has outsourced its manufacturing and borrowed money in order to have a higher standard of living than it’s entitled to based on its productivity. Rather than being ‘cheated’, the US has been taking a free ride on the globalization train,” the editorial concluded.

“The US should stop whining about itself being a victim in global trade and put an end to its capricious and destructive behaviour. Instead, it should commit itself to working with its trading partners to establish a fair, free and WTO-centred multilateral trading system that is in line with the times.”