Czech Business Today

Before the summer break, on 15^th June, Brussels hosted the first EU-US summit after the change of the US administration. Not only was it the first mutual summit that the newly elected President of the United States attended but it was also the first EU-US summit since 2014 and the first visit to the EU institution by an American President since 2017.

Needless to say, expectations of the EU Member States, general public but also businesses were very high. And from the businesses’ point of view, the summit brought hope that the renewed transatlantic partnership will go in the right direction. The main business-related outcome of the summit was the decision to end the dispute between the two sides in the area of airplane manufacturing.

The infamous Airbus-Boeing case was the longest trade dispute in the history of the WTO and resulted in tariffs that negatively impacted exporting companies on both sides of the Atlantic. The result of the dispute that had been dividing both sides for 17 years is that the EU and the US will suspend all the tariffs worth USD 11.5 billion for a period of 5 years. In the meantime, they will work on a solution at the ministerial level that would benefit both sides in a newly established Working Group on Large Civil Aircraft.

However, the Airbus-Boeing case wasn’t the only topic that created tension in recent times, another being the tariffs and differences on measures on aluminium and steel. The partners agreed that they will try to find a solution by the end of the year. Furthermore, they will also engage even more intensively in the multilateral discussion regarding this topic, as the main reason for the restrictive measures is the global overcapacity of aluminium and steel. Apart from that, leaders of both parties agreed to cooperate in the areas of: vaccines and support of sustainable global recovery; a rule based multilateral trading system; establishing a joint experts’ working group on resumption of non-essential travel between the EU and the US; further engage in delivering the commitments of the Paris Agreement; support green development; and foster a fair, sustainable and modern international tax system that would be based on global consensus.

European businesses see all these commitments as a very positive sign and a much-needed impetus to the future of EU-US relations. It will be necessary to turn all the commitments into concrete actions. A very positive signal in this context was the recent inaugural meeting of the Trade and Technology Council that took place at the end of September in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.