US takes aim at EU digital rules

The United States on Monday demanded that the European Union make its regulation of the tech sector more “balanced” in exchange for a reduction of US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from the bloc.

- PHILIP BLENKINSOP

At a meeting in Brussels, EU ministers urged US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to implement their July trade deal, with cuts to US tariffs on EU steel and their removal from EU goods such as wine and spirits.

But Mr Lutnick said the 27-nation EU first needed to rethink its digital sector rules to make them more balanced.

“Once they set a framework that we are comfortable with and we understand it, resolve these outstanding cases that are old, then I think we can go and attack the steel and aluminum,” Mr Lutnick told reporters after the 90-minute meeting.

Mr Lutnick did not specify what changes the United States was seeking but did say that balanced rules could draw a trillion dollars of investment to the EU.