A 218-page long list has been drawn up with goods that may be affected by countermeasures, "if ongoing EU-US negotiations do not result in mutually beneficial results", writes the EU Commission in a press release.
The hope is still that the dispute with the US can be resolved.
"The EU is fully committed to reaching a negotiated solution with the US. We believe that good agreements can be made to the benefit of consumers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic", writes Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement.
Balls and juice
"At the same time, we are continuing to prepare for all possibilities and the consultation we are launching today will guide us in this necessary work", writes von der Leyen.
EU member states, companies, and organizations are now given the opportunity to comment on the list published, just as when the EU launched its initial response earlier this spring.
Then, however, the list was "only" 99 pages long. Now, it's about 218 pages with all sorts of industrial and agricultural products. Everything from golf balls and pear juice to diamonds and shark fins is included on the rather comprehensive list.
95 billion euros
The Commission wants to receive comments by June 10 to then be able to prepare for countermeasures in time for mid-July when the current 90-day pause in the trade war is set to expire.
The EU has already prepared tariff responses on goods worth 25 billion euros - i.e., goods where US imports to the EU currently amount to that sum annually.
With the new list, the idea is to add goods worth an additional 95 billion euros per year. It's still significantly less than the hundreds of billions that US tariffs are estimated to "cost" Europe.
We're not following a dollar-for-dollar or euro-for-euro principle. We're talking about rebalancing rather than countermeasures, says an EU official at a digital press conference from Brussels.
