News / EU US trade deal a 'soundbite and handshake' – shippers want detail

© Daniil Peshkov

The main takeaway from the trade deal struck on Sunday between the EU and the US is that a 15% tariff will apply to roughly 70% of imported goods from the 27-nation bloc – half the threatened rate of duty.

So on the face it, good news for EU exporters – or at least less bad than had been feared. However, the absence of real detail in the deal means a number of shippers are still not sure what’s in store for them, according to a senior representative.

“There is no legal text with detailed annexes that shippers can use to check definitively if their goods are affected,” James Hookham, director of the UK-based Global Shippers Forum (GSF), told The Loadstar.

“All the ‘deals’ have been little more than a soundbite and handshake, so I expect everyone is waiting for some kind of official readout from the commission to understand what the details are. The best we have at the moment is [EC president] Ursula von der Leyen’s statement that the 15% tariff applies to the ‘vast majority’ of EU exports to the US.

Then there is the equivalent process in the US, when the administration translates what they think was agreed into actual tariff rates in the Harmonised Tariff Schedule. This is the one that counts, as it is what will be applied at the US border.

“We may get a better understanding of what was agreed by the end of the week – having said that, the UK is still waiting for confirmation of several key parts of its deal, announced in May.”

Ms Von der Leyen said the EU and the US would abandon duties on each other’s aircraft, semiconductor equipment, critical raw materials, and “certain” chemicals, generics, and agricultural products, adding that Brussels would “keep working to add more products to this list”.

According to EU officials, exports of pharmaceuticals will remain duty-free until such time as President Trump completes his section 232 national security investigation into the sector. But even if the investigation leads to tariffs on pharmaceuticals, the top level of 15% will apply to EU products.

Yesterday,  EU’s commissioner for trade Maroš Šefčovičs said the EU-US deal brought “renewed stability, and opens the door to strategic collaboration”.

He added: “Consider an alternative. A trade war may seem appealing to some, but it comes with serious consequences. With at least a 30% tariff, our transatlantic trade would effectively come to a halt, putting close to five million jobs, including those at SMEs in Europe, at grave risk.”

Meanwhile, in Germany, the spokesperson on economic policy for the ruling CDU/CSU party, Andreas Lenz, described the deal as a “painful compromise” that harmed both economy and consumers.

However, Chancellor Friedrich Merz attempted a positive spin, focusing on US tariffs on EU-made automobiles, a lucrative export market for German vehicles, which will be reduced from 27.5% to 15%.

Italy’s PM, Georgia Meloni, also sounded upbeat, saying “potentially devastating” consequences had been avoided – although she did add that Rome would have to “study the details” of the deal.

As for France, it has been highly critical, with trade minister Laurent Saint-Martin noting that settling for the trade deal was “tantamount to accepting that Europe was not an economic power”. Other French politicians have called on the EC to renew its threat of retaliation in order to broker a more equitable agreement.

On the industrial sectors likely to come out well from the EU-US trade deal, Mr Hookham noted: “The big win, if it’s real, is the lower-than-proposed rate on cars and on pharmaceuticals, which for everyone else will still be the subject of a separate US Department of Commerce investigation due next month.”

He said he had not seen any public comment from the European wine and spirits trade – an indication that players there were waiting for more information on how the trade deal would affect them.

As for a logistics services provider’s take on the agreement, Henri Le Gouis, EVP, global freight forwarding at Geodis, told French business newspaper Les Echos the deal’s “main advantage is that it follows in the footsteps of other bilateral deals initiated by the US and is roughly on the same level, within a median range”.

He added: “This puts an end to a period of uncertainty, which would have been detrimental to everyone.”

That uncertainty led to the precautionary measure of stockpiling by US buyers, and thus container traffic imports at major American ports have showed year-on-year declines in recent months.

“The key question is how consumer demand will react to 15% tariffs, given that the dollar itself is also depreciating. We risk seeing demand taking a hit, probably around September, after the goods already delivered to the US have been sold,” added Mr Le Gouis.