Catherine Field: Europe Correspondent on the increasing chances of a trade war between the US and China, and Europe

The US is facing a trade war with China and a potential trade war with Europe. 

Donald Trump's threatening to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to more than 100% in response to the retaliatory tariffs announced by China over the weekend. 

The EU is still mulling over its response. 

Paris Correspondent Catherine Field told Mike Hosking in the past few hours, the EU's revealed it offered the US a "zero-for-zero" tariff deal in February and never heard back. 

She says the EU is still leaving that on the table but are now looking at some sort of retaliation. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Catherine Field. Morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
So to talk me through this, because I'm already confused,
as I think is most of the world. So you guys,
EU go reteliatory later on this week. Yet at the
same time you're offering the removal of industrial tariffs and
Paris wants to whack the services. Is Paris out of
line with the EU? Is the EU retelliatory or wanting
to negotiate? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, good morning, Mike. Lots of questions in there. Let's
unpack a few of them.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
First of all, the EU is still trying to work
out what is going on.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I are these tariffs here to stay?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Are this current American administration is trying to re engineer
the global trading system?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Or is it just a negotiating tachnic.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
So for the meantime, they're all talking tough, but still
trying to find out if there's any room whatsoever for
negotiations any way forward without some sort of huge, you know,
robust countermeasures. Now, in the last couple of ours, we
have discovered that the European Union a sort of vonderline

(01:04):
and the Trade Commissioner put forward back in February mid
February and offered to the American administration to have zero tariffs,
reciprocal zero tariffs. They haven't heard back from that. The
EU has said that still remains on the table. They
would prefer that to be the way forward. But nevertheless,

(01:24):
they are going to be looking at some sort of retaliation.
They're going to be looking again at goods and services
just to see what they can have up their sleeve
if this twenty percent tariff which has been announced comming
to fact against you European Union, whether that stays in place.

(01:45):
So that's where we are want countermeasures ready to go,
but hoping that the differences will narrow. Now when it
comes to services, Mike, this is where everyone sort of
gets to forgets a bit about what's going on. We
hear all the time that the EU has a good
surplus around three hundred and ten billion New Zealand dollars

(02:08):
with US, but in fact, when it comes to services,
there's a deficit of about two hundred and twenty New
Zealand billion New Zealand dollars. So what France, Germany and
Austria is saying is let's keep this one up our sleeves.
Let's hit back at big tech now that means heading
back at the giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google.

(02:31):
These are all big players when it comes to Europe,
so you could start finding them, for example, violating digital
competition rules all sorts of things like that and making
it more difficult. For example, we've spoken about this before.
X what used to be known as Twitter, of course,
is already in breach of content moderation rules and there's

(02:52):
set to have a fine of about six percent of
the of its global turnovers. So the France particularly and
German is looking at that as a way of saying, listen,
you know, when it comes to services, we've got a
little bit of our sleeves.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah. Is everybody in lockstep in the EU as much
as the EU can be in lockstep? Or has everyone
got their own plan?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Everyone's in lockstit when it says let's just wait and
see how this is going to shake down, I mean
there's that old quote of never interrupt your enemy when
he is making a mistake. Because they all realize that
this is a big mistake being made, or they think
this is a big mistake being made by Donald Trump,
So let's just let it all continue.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Working its way down there.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
When it comes to other matters, say, for example, on
you attacking services here, we're seeing a bit of divergence,
particularly when it comes to Ireland, of because Ireland has
huge yeah, huge in Ireland, they've really made so much
of their economy based on things like Apple, Microsoft, to Amazon.
They're saying, whoa, wait until we're way further down the

(04:00):
line before you start talking about this. But of course,
French President Emmanuel mac cron just immediately after these tariffs
were announced, Mike, he got around the table at the
Elitesai Palace a lot of the French industry leaders and said, hey,
if you've got any investment going into the US and
you can stop it, stop it now.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Interesting, just give us a quickly on Marine le pen forgetting.
Of course, she's convicted in Beezler. She still seems to
be moderately politically popular. Where does this go?

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Well, she put it forward to the courts for an appeal,
putting a lot of pressure on the judges. Interestingly, the
three judges that handed down that decision against her last week,
that guilty verdicts, they are now under police protection because
there are concerns that she's whipping up her supporters and
just making it very difficult for when it comes to

(04:49):
the safety of these judges, as putting judges in an
impossible position. She had a ver sparsely attended rally here
in Paris on Sunday. Essentially she's saying it's a witch
and that you're going around saying people are more important
than judges and it's.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Up to the people to decide.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Okay, Doky, I'm glad we got you on board. Catherine
appreciate it very much. The attendance, they were expecting hundreds
of thousands. They got thousands, but not the sort of
numbers they were expecting, so it'll be interesting to see
where that goes. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
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