The fine against the U.S. tech giant lands just as Washington prepares new duties that could put last year’s fragile trade truce to the test.
Camille Gijs, Mathieu Pollet, Jacob Parry, Zoya Sheftalovich
During a meeting with the EU’s 27 envoys on Wednesday, the newly appointed head of the Commission’s trade department, Ditte Juul Jørgensen, said that although Brussels was confident Washington would respect the commitments listed under the Turnberry deal, it was ready to react if it didn’t, three EU diplomats familiar with the conversation told POLITICO.
One added that ambassadors would be ready to convene an extraordinary meeting next week “to talk strategy and discuss possible countermeasures.”
In the meantime, though, nobody knows when exactly the next tariffs will come.
“We’re not focused on a particular timeline. We’re focused on fulfilling the legal and statutory requirements,” Greer said after a hearing in the U.S. Senate.
Even if the administration has yet to finalize tariffs under the most immediate investigation into imports made with forced labor, it has several legal avenues available to avoid any gap once the temporary tariffs — imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — lapse.
Washington could still reissue the 10 percent tariff for another 150 days, or declare that any new tariffs retroactively began on July 25, according to Greta Peisch, who was general counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative under former President Joe Biden. These options are legally precarious, however, with a U.S. trade court already ruling that Trump’s use of the measure to set the existing 10 percent duty is illegal.
