Governments from Tokyo to Berlin and Ottawa to Paris have voiced sharp criticism of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with several of the US’s staunchest long-term allies threatening retaliatory action.
Trump announced on Wednesday that he would impose a 25% tariff on cars and car parts shipped to the US from 3 April in a move experts have predicted is likely to depress production, drive up prices and fuel a global trade war.
The US imported almost $475bn (£367bn) worth of cars last year, mostly from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Germany. European carmakers alone sold more than 750,000 vehicles to American drivers.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday he had told his US counterpart that tariffs were not a good idea. They “disrupt value chains, create an inflationary effect and destroy jobs. So it’s not good for the US or European economies,” he said.
Paris would work with the European Commission on a response intended to get Trump to reconsider, he said. Officials in Berlin also stressed that the commission would defend free trade as the foundation of the EU’s prosperity.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, bluntly described Trump’s decision as wrong, and said Washington appeared to have “chosen a path at whose end lie only losers, since tariffs and isolation hurt prosperity, for everyone”.
France’s finance minister, Eric Lombard, called the US president’s plan “very bad news” and said the EU would be forced to raise its own tariffs. His German counterpart, Robert Habeck, promised a “firm EU response”. “We will not take this lying down,” he said.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said Europe would approach the US with common sense but “not on our knees”. Good transatlantic relations are “a strategic matter” and must survive more than one prime minister and one president, he said.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, described the move as “bad for businesses, worse for consumers” because “tariffs are taxes”. She said the bloc would continue to seek negotiated solutions while protecting its economic interests.
The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the tariffs were “very concerning” and that his government would be “pragmatic and clear-eyed” in response. The UK “does not want a trade war, but it’s important we keep all options on the table”, he said.
His Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, said on social media: “We will get through this crisis, and we will build a stronger, more resilient economy.”
Carney later told a press conference that his administration would wait until next week to respond to the new US threat of tariffs, and that nothing was off the table regarding possible countermeasures.
He would, he added, speak to provincial premiers and business leaders on Friday to discuss a coordinated response.
“It doesn’t make sense when there’s a series of US initiatives that are going to come in relatively rapid succession to respond to each of them. We’re going to know a lot more in a week, and we will respond then,” he said.
One option for Canada is to impose excise duties on exports of oil, potash and other commodities. “Nothing is off the table to defend our workers and our country,” said Carney, who added that the old economic and security relationship between Canada and the US was over.
South Korea said it would put in place a full emergency response to Trump’s proposed measures by April.
China’s foreign ministry said the US approach violated World Trade Organization rules and was “not conducive to solving its own problems”. Its spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said: “No country’s development and prosperity are achieved by imposing tariffs.”
The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, said Tokyo was putting “all options on the table”. Japan “makes the largest amount of investment to the US, so we wonder if it makes sense for [Washington] to apply uniform tariffs to all countries”, he said.
Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report
