BRUSSELS (Sputnik) — According to Politico, the list of targeted products includes different kinds of meat, chocolate, mustard, chestnuts, paprika, motorbikes, hair clippers and others. French, German and Italian products will comprise the biggest part on this list.
Influential US agriculture producers are encouraging the administration of Donald Trump to punish the European Union due to the fact that it has a $136-billion surplus in trade with the United States, as the bloc refuses to import US beef treated with hormones for over 20 years, according to the media outlet.
In 1988, the European Union imposed a ban on imports of US hormone-treated beef, which amounts to 95 percent of all beef produced in the United States. In 1999, the United States imposed sanctions against the European Union, which were approved by the World Trade Organization, prescribing higher import tariffs on a number of products.
In 2009, President Barack Obama reached an agreement with Brussels to lift the trade sanctions and the European Union pledged to annually import up to 50,000 metric tons of hormone-free beef. However, Washington has remained dissatisfied with the level of EU implementation of its obligations.
The possible tariffs, which are now under consideration, were launched by Obama's outgoing Trade Representative Michael Froman amid a pause between the European Union and the United States in the negotiations regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) seeking to establish a free trade zone between the two sides of the Atlantic.
The fate of the TTIP is uncertain because Trump is a staunch supporter of bilateral trade agreements as opposed to free-trade areas.
