Fact check
From EU to beef: This is what the United States claims in the customs dispute
The Trump cabinet likes to leather against the EU. The latest occasion is the customs dispute. It is not the truth that the state of the state had only been founded to “overrun the United States”.
If the US President Donald Trump goes something against the grain, he likes to replace “fake news” loudly. However, his government itself spreads news in which the truth content seems questionable. Three claims in the current customs dispute over the European Union (EU) in the fact check:
The EU was founded “to pull the United States over the table”. This is “the purpose” of the EU, Trump said when the US special tariffs were presented.
The EU is a community of 27 countries. Together, the state alliance of large powers can of course appear differently than if the member countries negotiated individually. A comparison to the classification: Around 450 million EU citizens of the population are compared to almost 350 million Americans. But that does not mean that the EU would “rip off” the United States.
The state alliance in Europe was originally established in response to the suffering of the Second World War. On March 25, 1957, six states signed the Roman contracts for the founding of the EEC, the European Economic Community and the European Eucian Community Euratom: Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Since the Maastrichter Treaty came into force on November 1, 1993, the “Union” state is called. The agreement created the basis for an economic and monetary union and brought entry into a common foreign and security policy.
Trump’s allegation was rejected from Brussels. The EU is the largest free market in the world-and a “blessing” for the United States, said a spokesman for the EU Commission. The large and integrated internal market has made trade easier, reducing the costs for US exporters and harmonizing standards and regulations in 27 countries. As a result, US investments in Europe are extremely profitable.
It was “almost impossible” to run US cars into the EU, said Trump.
This is an exaggeration, even if the numbers are initially right in terms of Trump: While almost 450,000 cars from Germany went to the USA in 2023, it was only 136,000 in the opposite direction, according to the VDA industry association. In addition, the United States has only raised 2.5 percent inches on cars from Europe before the introduction of the 25 percent premium-the EU’s sentence for US vehicles is 10 percent.
The shortcoming of the Auto sales of the US brands in Europe is more of a question of taste, says industry expert Stefan Bratzel from the Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch Gladbach. That is “the big problem of the US manufacturers”. With the exception of the Tesla vehicles, in which the paragraph also sacks, they “actually have nothing to offer that could gain larger market shares,” explains Bratzel.
Industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer describes the “Cars from America” as “simply unsalable” for us. Because they are too big for Europe and the gasoline consumption is far too high. “You can’t sell a car with eight cylinders and 15 liters of consumption.” In the United States, this is not a problem in view of the petrol prices there, in Europe.
Europe would “hate” American beef, said US trade minister Howard Lutnick. EU beef is “weak”, “beautiful” from the USA.
Whether US meat, as claimed by the US Minister of Trade, is ultimately more beautiful than that in Europe, is probably in the eye of the viewer. In any case, the trade dispute between the EU and the USA over beef has been running for a long time. As claimed, the cause is not emotionally justified, but is of health concerns.
The dispute began in the 1980s, when the then European Community (EC) banned the import of US beef, which was treated with growth hormones. The EU justified the ban on health concerns about the possible risks of hormone -treated meat, while the United States saw an illegal trade barrier.
The conflict then escalated, the United States complained in 1996 at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the EU. The WTO agreed with the USA because the EU could not provide sufficient scientific evidence that justified the ban on hormone -treated beef. Nevertheless, the ban remained due to health precautions.
In 2009, the EU and the USA agreed on a compromise solution that enabled the import of hormone -free beef from the USA. In 2019, an agreement was made that raises the import quota for hormone -free beef from the USA to 45,000 tons.
EU on its member states History of the EU PM of the industry association VDA EU Commission: Agree of EU and the USA about import quantities for hormone-free beef
dpa
Source: Stern
