Brussels has the "appropriate instruments" to hit back at the United States for its latest round of 10 percent flat tariffs, France's trade minister Nicolas Forissier told the Financial Times newspaper on Saturday.
"Should it become necessary, the EU has the appropriate instruments at its disposal," Forissier said in an interview with Britain's Financial Times, published on Saturday.
He said Paris was in talks with EU counterparts and the European Commission after Trump signed an executive order on Friday introducing a “temporary” 10 percent flat global tariff.
Trump announced the measure hours after the US Supreme Court ruled that many of the existing tariffs he had levied on trading partners were illegal.
What's next after US Supreme Court tariff ruling?
Following the Supreme Court ruling, President Emmanuel Macron, who is spending Saturday at the Paris International Agricultural Show, said: "We will look precisely at the consequences, at what can be done, and we will adapt."
"It’s not a bad thing to have supreme courts and therefore the rule of law,” he said. “It’s good to have powers and counter-powers in democracies.”
Retaliatory tariffs
The EU response could include options such as the "trade bazooka" – an anti-coercion instrument (ACI) that could affect US technology companies, the newspaper said, citing French officials.
What is the EU’s ‘anti-coercion instrument’ and will it be used against Trump?
The ACI has a broad range of powers from export controls to tariffs on services, as well as excluding US companies from EU procurement contracts, it said.
There is also a suspended package of retaliatory tariffs on more than 90 billion euros of US goods that could be deployed, the report added.
(with newswires)
