The European Union’s trade policy with America is “very unfair”, President Donald Trump said in an interview to be aired Sunday, warning that his many problems with Brussels “may morph into something very big”.
“We cannot get our product in. It’s very, very tough. And yet, they send their product to us-no taxes, very little taxes. It’s very unfair,” Trump told ITV News in the interview conducted Thursday.
“I’ve had a lot of problems with (the) European Union, and it may morph into something very big from that standpoint-from a trade standpoint.”
Trump delivered the warning during a wide-ranging interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he took his “America First” agenda to the global business elite.
In a speech Friday he told the forum that his mantra “does not mean America alone” and hinted that the US could rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he withdrew from a year ago.
But earlier this month the Trump Administration imposed steep tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels, and his comments in the interview to air Sunday may cause alarm in European capitals over future trade with the US.
The Trump Administration last year vowed to impose nearly 300 percent punitive tariffs on airplanes manufactured by Canada’s Bombardier.
A bipartisan US trade panel blocked that decision on Friday but the dispute, which has inflamed relations with Ottawa-and to a lesser degree Britain, where Bombardier has a large workforce-could be a harbinger for the EU.
In other remarks released ahead of the interview’s airing, Trump appeared to slight British Prime Minister Theresa May’s handling of fraught Brexit negotiations, declaring that he would have “negotiated it differently”.
“I would have had a different attitude,” he said of the talks, which have followed Britain’s June 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU, and will continue through to its planned departure in March 2019.
