After announcing in April tariff hikes ranging from 11% to 50%, Donald Trump later scaled them back to 10% and imposed a 90-day ultimatum to conclude bilateral agreements.
Under this pressure, several countries — including the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and China — negotiated tariff reductions or stabilisations with the United States.

In an effort to appease the U.S. administration, the European Union likewise made a series of unilateral concessions:

• At the end of June, the EU — together with the other G7 countries — agreed to exempt U.S. multinationals from the 15% global minimum tax provided for in Pillar 2 of the agreement finalised under the OECD framework in 2021.

• On 27 July, Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump reached a political agreement on tariffs.

• On 5 August, the European Commission (EC) adopted a regulation removing the additional tariffs that the EU was to impose on U.S. goods in response to Trump’s unilateral tariffs on EU products.

• On 21 August, the EC and the United States issued a Joint Statement announcing that they had agreed on a “Framework on an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade.”

• Finally, on 28 August, the EC published two draft regulations to implement the EU’s commitments on tariffs: one concerning the elimination of tariffs on lobster, and another providing for the elimination and reduction of tariffs on U.S. industrial and agricultural goods.

This note, based on a legal analysis conducted by Clémentine Baldon and Nikos Braoudakis, members of the Paris Bar, together with Juliette Robert (Baldon Avocats), analyses the content of the Joint Statement and the draft regulation on the elimination and reduction of tariffs on U.S. industrial and agricultural goods.
It identifies a series of incompatibilities with EU law and outlines possible courses of action for Members of the European Parliament.