French PM says EU hitting wrong targets with retaliation tariffs on US

PARIS — French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Sunday questioned the European Commission’s decision to hit American bourbon and other products with tariffs as part of an escalating tit-for-tat trade war between Washington and Brussels.

“Have some missteps been made? Yes, probably, because Kentucky bourbon has been included as if it were a trade threat,” Bayrou said in an interview with France Inter on Sunday.

U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new trade war by imposing  25 percent global steel and aluminum tariffs last week.

In response, the European Commission on Wednesday said it would reimpose tariffs on iconic American products such as Harley-Davidson motorcycles, jeans and bourbon. Trump’s response arrived quickly as, the following day, he threatened to slap a 200 percent tariff on all “wines, champagne and alcoholic products” from France and other EU countries.

Bayrou suggested that the Commission was wrong in choosing the products on its retaliation list. The European Commission “reused a very old list without re-reading it, as it should have done,” Bayrou said. 

His comments seem to imply that Trump threatened to hit the EU’s alcohol sector because Brussels decided to specifically hit bourbon, among other products.

Bayrou stressed that France’s cognac sector risks again to be taken hostage of the transatlantic trade tension at a moment in which it is already a collateral victim of another trade spat between the EU and China. Beijing last year launched a trade probe against imports of European brandy (including France’s cognac) in response to EU duties on Chinese electric vehicles.

Bayrou met cognac producers on Friday. “They are under the double fire of China on one side, and of the United States on the other,” he said.

Beijing last year launched a trade probe against imports of European brandy in response to EU duties on Chinese electric vehicles. | Hector Retamal/Getty Images

The Chines probe will be one of the top files on the agenda of France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot as he is set to travel to China before the end of March.