[defertoreptar]

> The EU imposes a 10 percent tariff on passenger cars, compared with the 2.5 percent U.S. duty on European autos.

A study by the CESifo Institute in Germany found unweighted average EU tariffs of 5.2 percent, compared with the U.S. rate of 3.5 percent.

“The EU is by no means the paradise for free traders that it likes to think,” Gabriel Felbermayr, director of the think tank’s Center for International Economics, told the German business newspaper Handelsblatt.

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/22/europe-resist...

[mads_ravn]

Thanks for the link. But isn’t it sort of meaningless to talk about unweighted percentages? If either side applies an extremely high tariff for a product that is rarely traded, then it would have a large effect on the unweighted average, but no real effect on trade (though I suppose you could argue that it can affect single sectors in a devastating matter).

The best numbers I could find are more comparable, namely total US tariffs of 7.1 billion USD on imports worth 684 billion which approximately equals 1% vs EU tariffs of 5.7 billion USD on imports worth 575 which is also roughly equal to 1% [1,2]. To me that seems pretty fair.

However I think the biggest issue (as an EU citizen) is the US insistence on not adhering to EU regulatory regimes, which is what I think made a lot of people oppose the TTIP. Also note that this has not been an issue when negotiating a EU-Japan trade deal.

[1] https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/unfree-trade-tru... [2] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/europe...

[kbrosnan]

The US has a 25% tariff on light trucks and 2d SUVs since 1964. As manufacturers tried different ways to circumvent the US government has closed these loopholes. The most famous is Ford Transit vans were shipped to the US with seats in an exempt configuration. In Baltimore the seats were removed before delivery to dealers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax