Levi levy: EU threatens 25% tax on iconic US brands

The EU has reiterated its threat to impose huge levies on American products if Donald Trump carries out his promise to increase trade tariffs on European steel and aluminium.

Cecilia Malmstrom, EU Commissioner for Trade, told the BBC that Levi jeans, bourbon whiskey and Harley Davidson motorbikes were on a draft list of US goods to be hit with a 25% import tax.

She said if the US applied new tariffs to European steel, the EU would take the issue to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Analysts at UBS said Europe would have a good chance of winning, but the group could take 18 months to reach a decision, says CNN Money.

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Malmstrom said Europe wanted “to retaliate but not escalate” a new trade war, but any response from the EU “is likely to provoke further action by the US”, says the BBC.

The tit-for-tat between the US and EU has already had an impact on European car makers, whose share prices dropped on Monday following a threat by Trump to tax their vehicles.

The US is the largest export market for cars made in the EU, making up 25% of the €192bn (£171bn) of motor vehicles the bloc exported in 2016.

Last week, the European Commission President Jean Claude-Junker threatened retaliatory duty hikes on products manufactured in key Republican states “as well as orange juice from Florida, a critical swing state in elections”, says The Daily Telegraph.

While Trump has defended plans to tax imports of steel and aluminium in the face of growing domestic and international condemnation, he has also showed a willingness to change his mind.

In an early morning tweet on Monday, he said that if the US achieved a better deal for itself in the latest version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) he would abandon plans for a tariff on steel imported from Canada and Mexico.