The EU will respond forcefully to unfair and arbitrary tariffs on EU goods, regardless of which country introduces them. This has been the EU Commission's message since Donald Trump's election victory in November.
And Sweden's Minister for Foreign Trade Benjamin Dousa (M) does not rule out that new US tariffs may lead to tough countermeasures from the EU's side. But free trade and eliminated trade barriers are still the guiding star.
No concrete proposal
Currently, we have no concrete proposal from the USA, where we know all the details. But Sweden advocates for as free trade as possible and reduced trade barriers, says Dousa to TT.
Countermeasures can be a way to mark that increased tariffs are not acceptable. But then it is important that the measures are in line with the World Trade Organization WTO's regulatory framework, he adds.
It's about designing the countermeasures so that they are "proportionate, well-balanced, and do not harm Swedish interests", according to Dousa.
This is something we will monitor very closely when we have a dialogue with the EU's trade ministers and with the EU Commission, he says.
Higher prices
The tariffs that Trump is now threatening with can hit Swedish steel exporters hard, according to Dousa.
But this type of tariff does not least hit American industry and American consumers, who will get higher prices. We also know that tariffs generally are inflationary, he says.
Dousa sees it as important that the EU now continues to try to finalize the free trade agreements with other countries that are in the final stages of negotiations. He warns at the same time that protectionist winds are also blowing in EU countries that were previously free trade friends.
We have Mexico and Mercosur, with large parts of Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela). There, Brazil is the really big interesting market. There are also discussions with India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, says Dousa about the free trade agreements he considers within reach.
Now the EU must be forward-looking, and that is something Sweden is trying to gather support for, he adds.
The previous Trump administration introduced 25-percent tariffs on steel and 10-percent tariffs on aluminum in 2018. The EU responded then with tariffs on American goods such as juice, motorcycles, bourbon, and juice.
Trump's tariffs were later converted by the Biden administration to a quota system in 2021, in exchange for the EU freezing its countermeasures. This agreement, however, expires in March this year, and the EU's countermeasures will then begin to apply again if no agreement is reached on something else.
Sweden is, for its economic size, a relatively large steel exporter on the world market, and around 8 percent of Swedish steel exports go to the USA.
In 2023, Sweden was the EU's fourth-largest exporter of steel to the USA, with a total export of 191,000 tons. It was among EU countries that year only Germany (531,000 tons), the Netherlands (388,000 tons), and Belgium (231,000 tons) that exported more steel to the USA, according to the industry organization Eurofer.
