The EU is asking to be excluded from US tariffs on imported steel and aluminum – but if not, it stands ready to counter-punch with a firm and proportionate response.

Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an order imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum. The EU, America’s second largest source of steel imports, has denounced the tariffs as violating World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.

Cecilia Malmström, the EU Trade Commissioner, delivers a speech during a debate on US tariffs on steel and aluminum during a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, March 14, 2018. /VCG Photo

“We suspect that the US move is effectively not based on security considerations but economic safeguard measures in disguise. So we are entitled to use the WTO safeguard agreement to rebalance the benefits we have granted to the US in the past,” said Cecilia Malmström, the EU Trade Commissioner.

The EU is preparing a robust response for reducing any negative impact on its economy, if it cannot be excluded from any punitive measures. The European Commission has drawn up a list of US goods worth 2.8 billion euros (around 3.5 billion US dollars), targeting everything from peanut butter and cranberry juice to bourbon and branded jeans.

The EU said it would impose tariffs on these American products if EU steel and aluminum is hit. And Trump hit back, threatening to tax European cars as retaliation. And to complicate the matter, the US president, who has long advocated for European allies to step up their contributions to NATO, has linked trade tariffs to defense spending.

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An analyst from Rasmussen Global consultancy, Nina Schick, said that defense spending should not “tie into trade.” And Fraser Cameron, an analyst from EU-Asia Center, told CGTN that responses from EU countries should be united.

Trump’s 15-day deadline, for allies to negotiate exemptions on metal imports, falls across the two days that EU leaders will gather for a summit in Brussels. The EU Council President Donald Tusk has already called on the US president to “make trade not war.”

“I don’t think the EU will back down. I don’t think it’ll make concessions to Donald Trump,” Schick said.