U.S. Threatens 100% Tariff in EU Dispute

The United States on Tuesday threatened to slap punitive 100% tariffs on European imports ranging from wine and cheese to clothes and sewing machines in a dispute over bananas.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office published a long list of potential sanctions targets in the dispute in which the United States accuses Europe of failing to abide by World Trade Organization dispute-settlement panel rulings against the European Union’s banana import regime.

The USTR said it will whittle down the list of targeted goods by Dec. 15 for sanctions to take effect Feb. 1 if Europe fails to settle the long-standing dispute.

European Trade Commissioner Leon Brittan in Brussels on Tuesday reacted angrily to the U.S. move. He accused the United States of engaging in the “rule of the jungle” and calling it an unwise move that could inflict wide damage on EU-U.S. relations.

But U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said it did no good to talk about a potential trade war.

“We are simply saying to Europe that Europe must comply with panel rulings,” Barshefsky told reporters after a speech to an export group.

She said the United States was still interested in trying to settle the argument through negotiation even though Europe has rebuffed earlier attempts to talk it out.

The WTO ruled last year in favor of the United States and a group of Latin American countries that argued that the EU’s banana import regime violated international trade rules and favored Caribbean growers over their producers and marketing companies.