Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on July 12, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleEU lawmaker Bernd Lange urges immediate countermeasures against Trump's tariff hikes on EU imports, calling them outrageous and a negotiation setback.
BERLIN (Reuters) -A senior European lawmaker said on Saturday Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against U.S. President Donald Trump's "outrageous" threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.
The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Bernd Lange, the head of the European Parliament's trade committee.
The bloc had also suspended all countermeasures after the U.S. imposed an initial tariff of 20% on European imports in April.
"It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%," Lange told Reuters.
"This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner," he added.
Europe should make it clear that these "unfair trade practices" were unacceptable, Lange said.
"We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately," he said.
"The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly."
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, writing by John Revill, editing by Thomas Seythal)
Bernd Lange described the increase from 20% to 30% as brazen and disrespectful, stating it undermines ongoing negotiations with a key trading partner.
The EU had suspended all countermeasures after the initial U.S. tariff was imposed but is now being urged to activate countermeasures immediately.
Lange indicated that the first list of countermeasures should be activated on Monday as planned, with a second list to follow quickly.
The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks prior to the announcement of the tariff increase.
The planned countermeasures are intended to signal that the EU finds the U.S. tariff practices unacceptable and to protect European goods from unfair trade practices.
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