The United States and Europe “seem to have avoided a self-destructive trade war for now in the biggest and deepest commercial and investment relationship the global economy knows,” said Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
Nevertheless, the details remain murky. Europe will increase its investment in the United States by $600 billion and commit to buying $750 billion worth of US energy products. It eliminates tariffs on a variety of items, including aircraft and plane parts, semiconductors, generic drugs and some chemicals and agricultural products.
Maury Obstfeld, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, note many of those investments were already in place. And the agreement appears to do little to eliminate the EU’s non-tariff barriers, such as value-added and digital taxes that the Trump administration had railed against.