By Milan Schreuer and Jack Ewing
BRUSSELS — When it comes to trade negotiations, there is Trump speed, and then there is Brussels speed. Reconciling the two will be more laborious and hazardous than expected, exposing the world’s biggest trade partnership to further turmoil in the months ahead.
That was the message after President Trump’s top trade negotiator concluded talks with his European counterpart on Monday, with both signaling that any negotiations would be unlikely to produce the quick wins Mr. Trump prefers. If the president runs out of patience, there is a high risk the talks could fall apart entirely, disrupting the $1 trillion in goods and services that flow across the Atlantic every year.
Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, met in Brussels with Cecilia Malmstrom, the European commissioner for trade, in the first in a series of formal discussions about what officials described as a far-reaching trans-Atlantic trade agreement.
Mr. Lighthizer, in a statement afterward, called the talks “constructive,” while Ms. Malmstrom described them in a tweet as “forward looking.”
Cecilia Malmström ✔@MalmstromEU Forward-looking meeting w @USTradeRep Robert Lighthizer today. A first opportunity to put into motion & operationalise the July statement by Presidents @JunckerEU & @RealDonaldTrump. We discussed how to move forward and identify priorities on both sides, and how to achieve… 1/2 100 2:00 PM – Sep 10, 2018
✔@MalmstromEU
Forward-looking meeting w @USTradeRep Robert Lighthizer today. A first opportunity to put into motion & operationalise the July statement by Presidents @JunckerEU & @RealDonaldTrump. We discussed how to move forward and identify priorities on both sides, and how to achieve… 1/2
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Progress, though, could be halting. In particular, the European Union appeared to step back from a major concession it made in August.
Ms. Malmstrom said then that the bloc was willing to cut tariffs on motor vehicles to zero, if the United States did the same. The president, his bluff called, immediately declared that the concession was inadequate. Now, the European line is that Ms. Malmstrom will need the approval of the union’s 28 member states before further talks on the issue.
By promising something and then backtracking, Ms. Malmstrom seemed to be taking a page from Mr. Trump’s own playbook. She also made it clear that Europe will not be as accommodating as Mexico, which agreed to revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement last month, allowing Mr. Trump to claim a victory.
“The E.U. is not going to work that way,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “They are not going to roll over the way the outgoing Mexican government did. There isn’t going to be an easy win here.”
For more read the full of article at The Nytimes
