“We have a lot of complaints”

US President Donald Trump continued to take aim at the European Union on Thursday for what he claimed was an unequal trade relationship.

“From America’s point of view, the EU is treating us very, very unfairly, very badly,” Trump said in a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Following Monday’s inauguration, Trump’s second term has been a major topic of conversation at Davos this year — especially given his threats of trade tariffs on the EU. China, Mexico, Canada and beyond.

Echoing earlier comments, Trump said in a speech in Davos: “They’re making it very difficult to get products into Europe, but they’re still waiting to launch and they’re selling their products in the US. So we have hundreds of people. We’ve got billions of dollars in deficits with the EU and nobody’s happy about that, and we We will do something about it.”

“Actually, they don’t take our agricultural products and they don’t take our cars, yet they send us millions of cars. They put tariffs on what we want to do… the EU,” he continued.

Trump said in December The EU will face “outright tariffs” if it does not increase its purchases of oil and gas from the US, European officials are prepared to do.

He added on Thursday: “They want to be able to compete better and you can’t compete when you can’t go through the approval process faster. There’s no reason why it can’t go faster … I’m trying to be constructive because I love Europe.” .

The US is the largest buyer of EU goods accounting for about one-fifth of the bloc’s exports. USA’ largest trade deficit There are cars and vehicles with the EU worth €102 billion (US$106 billion) in 2023. In the field of energy, Washington has a trade surplus of 70 billion euros with the European bloc; he has too significant trade surplus in services.

President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde told CNBC in Davos earlier this week The EU should “prepare” for the implementation of US tariffs during the Trump era. He also said it was a “very smart approach” that he didn’t immediately introduce sweeping rates … because regular rates don’t necessarily give you the results you’re looking for.

Meanwhile, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told CNBC a trade war was not in the interests of either the European Union or the United Stateshe calls the countries’ economies “very interconnected”.