BRUSSELS, March 23: EU member states were on Friday examining a list of US-made products that could be hit with hefty tariffs in retaliation for the the Bush administration’s decision to slap tariffs on imported steel.
Copies of the list — drawn up by the European Commission — have been given to the governments of the 15 EU member states, the commission’s trade spokesman Anthony Gooch said.
Gooch did not reveal the content of the list. But a source familiar with the issue said it included textile products, steel and citrus fruits.
If approved by the member states, the list will be sent immediately to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, where the EU has already lodged a formal protest against the US move.
Gooch refused to comment on a report Friday in the Wall Street Journal that the EU list includes products from US states that might be crucial in President George W. Bush’s expected bid for reelection in 2004.
EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy was quoted in the article as saying that he hoped that such a strategy would get the Bush administration to change course.
“Counter-measures are there to leverage a change of decision,” Lamy was quoted as saying. “You have to do that in sectors and places where you can build a coalition.”
Lamy’s spokesman said on Friday that the contents of the retaliation list were not discussed when the commissioner met Wall Street Journal reporters on Thursday, “not even off the record.”
Bush’s March 5 decision to raise tariffs on some steel imports by as much as 30 per cent for three years was aimed at increasing Republican support in steel states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the newspaper said.
Items included on Lamy’s list are Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Tropicana orange juice, and textiles and steel products concentrated in Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, states that gave Bush his narrow victory in the 2000 elections, it said.
Since July 1999 the United States has had it own “hit list” of European agricultural products subject to 100 percent tariffs in retaliation for a EU ban on beef raised with growth-spurring hormones.
The list includes French Roquefort cheese — a choice that led to the much-publicized August 1999 sacking of a McDonald’s fast-food outlet in southwest France by French farm activist Jose Bove and others.—AFP