特朗普威胁对欧盟加征关税以施压其接纳加拿大

Has been a terrible trade partner. And, no. I don't see that. And if they do that, if I think it's at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things. Press president Trump saying he will consider imposing serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe if the EU admits Canada as an associate member. Let's bring in our Brussels bureau chief, Suzanne Lynch, who's with me in studio this morning.

Suzanne, the trade war between The US and Canada has been escalating in recent months. The will those comments from Donald Trump raise concerns here in Europe about this plan for Canada's associate membership? Yeah. I think people are work waking up here this morning, and they are concerned about what we're hearing overnight, from The US president. Obviously, the European Union has been quite happy that things have stabilized relatively speaking, between The US and the EU on trade.

It's well over a year now since that term reagreement, was agreed, which locked in that that ceiling of 15% on most goods, European goods going into The US. They don't want, to reopen that. And even though there's a lot of debate about whether that deal was a good one, and they really don't. So I think these, these messages from Donald Trump will worry at people. Now he did also say if this is a hostile act, he's going to look at it.

And he he talked about it being laughable, the idea of the EU Canada trade deal. And so whether he's actually gonna follow through as always with Trump is is is the big question. But I do think it is going to weigh our minds here about the wisdom, the strategy of announcing this yesterday at this keynote speech by Ursula Vonnie Lein. Had this been thought through, what's this gonna look like, and what are the implications then for the EU's relationship with The US?

Well, there are so many questions still about this announcement. The question of what exactly associate membership is and how it's going to fit into the structure within the EU as well. What how much clearer is that idea this morning versus when we heard that announcement yesterday? Yeah. So, I mean, the idea of an associate member of the EU doesn't exist. So this has never happened before. However, there are other structures.

So for example, there's a European economic area that Norway and Iceland are part of, and that gives them access to the single market, but they're not part of the EU. So Switzerland had its own relationship with the EU, for example. Obviously, Britain is working through that ten years after Brexit to calibrate its own relationship. So there are different options here, but nothing that that denotes associate member.