ROME (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to introduce tariffs on European Union imports would undermine the bloc’s companies and its workforce and require a strong response from the EU, Italy’s business lobby said late on Wednesday.
Trump has said his administration will soon announce a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on goods from the EU, including cars.
“The threat is not only of an impact on trade dynamics. The truth is far more dramatic … What is coming from the American leadership is an attack on European companies and jobs,” Confindustria president Emanuele Orsini said in a statement.
He said Trump’s trade policies aimed to “deindustrialise” the European continent and urged Brussels to consider “extraordinary measures for an extraordinary time”.
“It is a dark hour,” Orsini said.
Industry Minister Adolfo Urso, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, took a more conciliatory tone, saying a trade war had to be avoided and urging unity among the western allies.
“It is not a time to divide the West, it is a time to unite the West, because Western challenges are common,” he told reporters on Thursday after a summit of ministers on the European steel sector in Paris.
“Italy is obviously worried about a possible escalation in the event of a trade war, because we are a major exporting country,” he added.
Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta said this month that a full implementation of the tariffs threatened before the U.S. election, plus retaliatory measures, would cut EU growth by half a percentage point, with Germany and Italy hardest hit.
The European Commission said on Wednesday that the EU would react “firmly and immediately against unjustified barriers to free and fair trade, including when tariffs are used to challenge legal and non-discriminatory policies”.
(Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni and Angelo Amante; editing by Giulia Segreti, Kevin Liffey and Christina Fincher)
