The EU warned US President Donald Trump on Thursday against letting individual states like Britain off global steel and aluminium tariffs, saying any such exemption would be viewed as applying to the whole bloc. The White House signalled Wednesday it would water down plans for the contentious tariffs by exempting Mexico, Canada “and possibly other countries as well”, in the face of jitters on world markets. But European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said Brussels would not accept a carve-out for Washington’s close ally Britain, which has voted to leave the European Union but remains a member until 2019. “What I have read today is that they are probably considering some exemptions to Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement) countries… but also they have mentioned the UK and maybe some other countries,” Katainen told reporters. “Trade wars are bad and easy to lose,” EU President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday, directly rebuffing Trump’s assertion last week that they were “good and easy to win.”

Source: Dhaka Tribune March 08, 2018 10:41 UTC