The EU and Japan held crunch talks with their US counterparts in Brussels on Saturday, hoping to get “clarity” on President Donald Trump’s controversial new steel and aluminium tariffs. Japan has decried the “grave impact” the Trump measures could have on the world economy. The EU’s top trade official Cecilia Malmstroem and Japanese Economy Minister Hiroshige Seko met for preliminary talks in Brussels, before being joined by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a loyalist to Trump’s “America First” mantra. Complicating matters, Trump indicated that Australia’s carve-out was linked to an unspecified “security agreement” outside of trade policy. The EU and Japan last year formally agreed the broad outlines of a landmark trade deal that was announced as a direct challenge to the protectionism championed by Trump.

Source: Egypt Independent March 10, 2018 14:15 UTC