As President Donald Trump and his administration double down on tariffs, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said she’s ready to support lower tariffs in the European Union on U.S. car imports.
Reuters reported on Thursday that the measure is meant to decrease tensions as the Trump administration threatens a new round of tariffs European cars. German automakers, particularly BMW, has threatened to slash U.S. jobs and move production out of the country if such tariffs are imposed.
Merkel said if the EU were to enact lower tariffs for the U.S., the rule would sit for all countries to conform with the World Trade Organization regulations.
“I would be ready to support negotiations on reducing tariffs but we would not be able to do this only with the U.S.,” she said.
General Motors recently delivered a stern warning to the Trump administration and warned of a “smaller” GM if new tariffs are enacted. The U.S. automaker noted the global supply chain, and rising prices would lead to fewer funds for U.S. investments and the potential for smaller workforces in the country.
Comments
The text is below in another comment to this topic
See my comments to another thread
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2018/07/gm-issues-warning-to-trump-administration-over-potential-tariffs-could-lead-to-smaller-automaker/#comment-740170
and my own reply to this.
The Chinese have given in to Trump in reduced tariffs and other barriers to entry…Remember when Sean said the sky would fall in if we imposed tariffs on the Chinese?
The failing EU suddenly is going to lower tariffs…lol…why didnt they do it before? Thank you, President Trump.
I say keep the pressure on because it is obvious Trump’s tactics are working. The economy is on fire (in a very good way) because of President Trump. Let’s keep the momentum going.
P.S. Ever notice how “Observer7” magically appears on this site when the article is about President? They try so hard but keep losing…sad, really. Poor Sean, still butthurt his candidate lost the election and the great State of Michigan switched from Democrat and voted a Trump majority.
The loudspeaker blaring empty propaganda shows again his lack of understanding of this world.
China hat imposed the 50:50 rule for foreign automakers and the 25% tariff for automobile imports as temporary measures to protect the development of their own Chinese automobile industry. This follows the example set by the United States of America after defeating the trumpist slavocracy in the Civil War, imposing duties on import of industrial products. This was the main goal for the Northern capitalists, who did not want to keep the USA as a raw material provider for the British Empire, but build up their own industries.
As part of the sea change signaled by Geely taking over the 49% operator of Malaysia’s Proton and 100% ownership of English Lotus (which once was a GM subsidiary), came this:
>>
China to scrap foreign ownership caps on joint ventures by 2022
Reuters | 2018/4/20
BEIJING — China will end foreign ownership caps on local auto companies by 2022 and will remove restrictions on new-energy vehicle ventures this year, a major shift that will open the market wider to carmakers such as Nissan and Tesla.
The country will remove limits on companies making electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2018, commercial-vehicle producers in 2020 and the wider passenger vehicle market by 2022, China’s state planner said in a statement.
<<
quoted from Automotive News China, article id=16063
Geely, China's largest wholly privately owned automobile manufacturer, had earlier bought the Swedish manufacturer Volvo from Ford.
China had successfully followed a different path than poor Mexico, which unfortunately had agreed to NAFTA making Mexico only the cheap labor maquiladora for US and European automobile manufacturers, and keeping her in a semi-colonial subservience to the USA. "Poor Mexico, so far from god, so close to the United States!" as a Mexican president lamented already some decades ago.
PS:
Since the empty loudspeaker of endless propaganda looks up only those articles on this blog where she or he thinks he can spatter his reactionary propaganda, this person gets a distorted view of reality. Poor propagandist! So far from reality, so close to the enemies of working people!
The real question should be why does Germany have tariffs on US goods and not expect the US to retaliate especially their very existence depends on the United States participation in NATO.
There is a serious error here: Germany does NOT HAVE tariffs on anything. Germany is just one part of the common market and customs union called the EU or European Union.
It is only the EU which sets tariffs. Commodities are due for customs where they cross the external EU border, not EU internal border.
One of my biggest problems with European countries and the European Union is people are quickly to justify their actions through this alliance when it benefits them. However, when the alliance is at fault the individual members are very quick to point out they don’t believe in the deciding vote.
Of all the Contents to have the majority of the countries in it form an alliance, Europe is by far the worst. Each country has the biggest ego and the citizens of the countries might parade in their “Euros” but will be the first to correct you that they are German before they are a “EU citizen”. Whatever that even means, the European Union isn’t even a country.
What da ya mean?
Which parts of reality do you need to be explained to you?
I meant continents, not contents. I don’t need anything explained to me. So long as each country in the European Union is nationalistic and has an ego, the EU will never properly work.
01 is correct, with some clarifications. The member states of the EU are not simpy “nationalistic”, they are bourgeois states, dictatorships of the tiny minority of property owners.
The EU is product of the same forces which pushed them to war against each other from 1914 to 1945, to “organize Europe”, because capitalism had grown so far to explode the national borders which had become a straitjacket for further economic development. There was also the absurd disproportion between huge colonial empires and their partially tiny colonial masters (especially Belgium and Netherlands).
The war ended by the USSR defeating German imperialism, and the USA establishing herself as the mightiest power in Europe. And under this over-power, and under the condition that half of Europe had been taken out of direct capitalist exploitation, the formerly warring powers could organise a common market. And create democratic advances as byproducts like the free movement over national borders and a common currency (for at last a majority of EU members) which is a material means of free circulation of working people, being able to travel without having to carry a different purse for each country, and being able to compare wages and prices without having to calculate.
Und after the two preconditions had diminished and vanished, and the “ever closer union” would need to give up real sovereignty, the centrifugal forces grow to limit the centripetal forces. A German general will never have the power over the French ‘Force de frappe’ and never sit on the board of the central banks of the two Franc CFA zones of the former French colonies in West and Central Africa. BREXIT happens by a coup d’état, but seems to end like the visit to the Hotel California, as expressed in the refrain of that famous song: “You can check out any time, but you can never leave”.
Only working people taking state power out of the hands of the propertied class of each single European country can create a real united Europe.
That is the reality of Europe and this world. And this had to be said once in this forum.
Now lets return to the automobile industry.
play chicken and see who wins.
Trump has already won. Notice how nervous other countries are? Because they have the most to lose. Without the U.S. their economies collapse.
Trump keeps on winning…and winning…and…
Trump has won the title “master of destruction”.
Good news. Germany shouldn’t have had those tariffs to begin with.
This is good news for everyone from Toyota to BMW to General Motors.
1st:
Member12 did not read what is written above, in the article itself and my correction to the false statement by Omegatalon.
Swallow the fact: GERMANY DOES NOT SET IMPORT DUTY TARIFFS!
Germany is a component of the EU customs union and is only the EU Customs Union which does set tariffs for imports duties.
2nd:
Merkel’s commented that she would support a decision of the EU to cancel the import tariffs for automobiles, but said also that this would have to be universal and not only for the USA.
It was the new US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who has reportedly proposed a zero percent customs union for automobiles including the USA and — did he say Germany? — that would be foolish for an ambassador who should know that the country he is working in is a member of the EU Customs Union and does not set tariffs on her own. This was reported from a meeting Grenell had with bosses of the German automoblie industries (manufacturers and suppliers) on July 4th in Berlin.
Anyway, Grenell’s idea would amount to a mini-mini TTIP, the Transatlantic Trace and Investment Partnership to establish a trans-atlantic free trade zone, which Trump after assuming the POTUS office refused to sign. TTIP would have included not only the automobile industry, but everything, and did care not only about tariffs but the much more important non-tariff trade barriers: certifications checking technical specifications and health and safety issues.
3rd:
Member12 is also wrong in his/her assumptions about the beneficiaries of slashing tariffs for automobiles between USA and the EU.
As far as I know, Toyota does not export from USA to Europe. Toyota has their own factories in Europe. Also Ford. GM has cut their ties to the European market by selling Opel/Vauxhall to PSA.
FCA is producing on both sides of the Atlantic and is happily importing and exporting across the pond.
The main beneficiaries would be BMW, Daimler (Mercedes) and FCA. BMW is exporting the X3 by the thousands from their factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina to all countries on this planet (only in March 2018 the X3 started in BMW’s plants in South Africa and China). In 2017, there were 13,568 first registrations of BMW X3 in Germany, but only 496 Cadillac and 1,026 Chevrolet (including 15 Trax imported from Korea).
Mercedes, too, uses their plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as a world wide export platform, mainly to China (where the Chinese counter measures against US exports is hitting Mercedes very hard).
If GM, after the 3 year competition clause from the Opel sale to PSA, would again enter the European market with mass market cars (from Spark over Cruze to Malibu), those would be imported not from the USA, but from Korea (possibly by rail, if Mr. Trump does not unleash a nuclear inferno over Korea).
For all other cars, GM would have to learn how to build cars compatible with EU specifications, which seems hard when you consider that GM is not even able to construct cars which can be assembled with steering wheel on the right.
So, shlashing customs tariffs between USA and EU would not change very much for the export of passenger cars across the Atlantic.
The main beneficiaries would be the European producers of LCV (Light Commercial Vehicles) from the abolishment of the 25% “Chicken Tax” tariff which the USA had imposed decades ago on imports of commercial vehicles from Europe (BTW, in response to a non-tariff trade barrier, the health and safety issues the European side upheld against importing US chicken meat).
Dude, you seem really butthurt you lost the election. But do you ever shut up?,
Seriously, it is people like you with an obvious left-wing political agenda that go on and on that make me vote for Trump. Keep doing it and President Trump will win by a landslide in 2020. You people really are not that smart…
The endless propagandist turns itself into laughing stock, know-nothing with a flowery phantasy.
#4 while Germany does not act for the EU they are the most powerful and influential member and would hold sway over the other countries.
#5 This is more than about just cars. The administration is looking for a better deal in general. Other offers or different combination of this could be considered. The cars are just one point of entry into negotiations.
The EU is far from a strong Union as we have seen. They not only want to hold some ground they also want to hold things together. They need us more than we need them. They know any large company would relocate here if needed to remain in the American market if they are already not here to start.
Not to be overly simplistic but these negotiations are not unlike the TV show Pickers.
The negotiate high and low then sometimes bundle deals. For too long we just said ok to the EU on what ever they wanted.
The better deal “in general” was TTIP, which DID create a “level playing field”, the largest free trade zone the capitalist era had ever seen, but Trump upon assuming the POTUS office tossed it in the dust bin. It had been negociated for the better part of a full decade, just to be thrown away. A better deal is not possible.
But Trump does not want a deal.
First he wants to strengthen and enlarge his reactionary mass base which he mobilzed by his fascist agitation during the election campaign, and establish an authoritarian rule over the US people (no wonder that some people in the US call him the “orange Hitler”).
Then he might try to roll back the decline of the US empire by military means, as already shown against Iran, and as the Koreans found out these days that the flattering words of Mr. Trump were actually just flattery meaning nothing, and that the real thing was the ultimatum for unconditional surrender which Pompeo spelled out in his press conference in Singapore and apparently repeated to his counterparts in Pyonyang. And the European imperialist powers are in the process of finding out the hard way that the US has never seen them als allies, but as vassals.
But one can’t roll back history.
What we are living thru now is the “who lost China” debate 2.0. While the US could defeat the competitor for world rule in the previous world war, she could not get the main prize she went to war for, which was the control over China. The US could prevent Japan from controlling China, but had to suffer the catastrophy of China being conquered by the Chinese themselves, which is presumably (although rather secretively) seen as a major crime by the 60 families ruling the USA.
Now China, based on the indepence won by her revolution 1949-1953, is rising to take her place in the world which is due to her based on representing near one fifth of mankind, and the US rulers — when they do follow Trump on his disastrous course — want to roll back.
But there is no way to roll back history and for the USA to return to the absolute power over the world from the mass murder in Nagasaki and Hiroshima to the end of the Korean War, the first one the USA did not win.
Any attempt to change that by force can only result in the elimination of human life, or even any form of organic live on this planet. It has to be avoid by any means necessary.
As to Germany and the European Union — the German ruling class has been the strongest in Europe since the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, but has never had this form of absolute power over the rest of it which the USA could sway over the world. This was shown in the outcome of the wars from 1914 to 1945, and has manifested itself most recently by the inability of the German rulers to impose their “solution” to the refugee “crisis” on the rest of the EU.
I could say some words about the limits of the EU, but I spare that to the readers.
Coming back to the automobile industry, which belongs to the realm of this blog and forum, Mr. Grenell and Mr. Trump may believe that the US owned automobile makers would be able to flood Europe with car exports from the USA once the WTO tariff is lifted — but that is a pipe dream.
The only companies which are moderately successfull exporting cars from the US to Europe are BMW and FCA. Ford is producing in Europe what they can sell in Europe, and GM has nothing to offer which they could export from the US to Europe. Well, the Camaro registeres some sales, and also Cadillac. But the small number of those sales is not due to the 10% WTO tariff, but to a lack of dealership network, and the bad image which US cars have for the majority of people here (of course, there are some fans of US cars, who like the US muscle cars with huge engines, but that is a minority). As said, those mass market Chevrolets from Spark to Malibu would be imported not from the US, but as before from Korea. As long as Korea still exists.
Correction on this one:
“The only companies which are moderately successfull exporting cars from the US to Europe are BMW and FCA.”
Daimler with their Mercedes brand exports from their Tuscaloosa, Alabama plant not only to China, but also to Europe.
For FCA one has to mention the Jeep brand, of which I don’t know which models are imported from USA, and which ones produced locally in Europe. At least of the Renegade I now that it comes from the Melfi plant (not far from Napoli (Naples for the english speaking world).
One sees also some Ford Ranger and RAM Pickups. Don’t know from where they are sourced from.
I’m just annoyed with the news and how it paints trump as a bully, it never goes into the aspect that china has tarrifs on the USA and the Eu…
If I were the president I would want it fair to, and if he has to push himself through to get the point across… So be it.
I’m not even American, I am Canadian… Though I can’t really understand trump coming after us
I am Canadian and absolutely love President Trump. Many Canadians I know love him and our province just voted in a pro-Trump Conservative and kicked the failed left-wing government out. They lost so badly that they are not even an officially party anymore because of too few reps/ votes. Of course the left-wing MSM tries to make you believe Canadian hate Donald Trump…Just like they tried to tell us Hitlery Clinton had a “96% chance of winning the election.” We all know how that turned out.
You’re not Canadian. I know you’re not. You’re just lying like you’ve done before, and I’ve had to correct you just like before.
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2018/06/gms-alan-batey-talks-nafta-china-trade-tariffs/#comment-739509
If you were Canadian, you wouldn’t make such a callous mistake about the mechanics of our political system.
What you are is a unemployed American with nothing better to do but to repeat factually incorrect talking points you’ve read of on Facebook, present them as true, and lie endlessly about your importance.
Furthermore, as an actually Canadian, I couldn’t get sheets about an American election now almost 2 years old.