EU-US trade tariffs in figures

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Harley Davidson motorbikes and tomato ketchup were on the list of countermeasures the European Union has announced after US President Donald Trump’s blanket tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

With a tit-for-tat trade war looming, here is the state of play in trade barriers the EU has already set up for American products.

The steep US 25-percent levies on EU steel and aluminium came into place after midnight with no exemptions despite countries’ efforts to avert them, in a step up from fresh duties Trump already imposed on Canada, Mexico and China since returning to the White House.

In 2023, 31 percent of American exports to the EU were subject to customs duties according to the World Trade Organization . Those measures are aimed at protecting European producers from American competitors, just as the United States is doing.

The average customs duty both apply to the other’s goods is one percent, according to the European Union’s executive Commission. But it varies from product to product, and EU and US tariffs are not always equal for the same product.

As the second biggest supplier of goods to the EU, the United States is a major economic partner of the 27-nation bloc.

In 2024, the bloc exported 531.6 billion euros worth of goods to the United States and imported 333.4 billion euros. Most of these imports were of crude oil, natural gas, medicines, which entered the EU mainly “duty free”.

The EU garnered around three billion euros in customs duties on US imports in 2023, the Commission said, while the United States earned seven billion euros from its imports from the EU.

Only one percent of American exports to the EU were subject in 2023 to custom duties higher than 10 percent, according to the WTO’s “Tariff analysis online”.

Tobacco products, by far the most taxed, were followed by ketchup, taxed at a 10.2 percent rate, honey , gherkins and caviar .

According to the WTO, in 2023 Harley-Davidson motorbikes faced six percent customs duties on arrival in the EU.

American cars were hit with 10 percent customs duties, 12 percentage points less than those imposed by American customs on vans.

The EU has warned that boats, which faced in 2023 less than five percent customs duties, and bourbon, not taxed at the moment, could be the next in the EU’s firing line.

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