Nations puzzle over how to respond to US trade war as global markets gyrate
America’s trading partners wrestled with responses to U.S. President Donald Trump's blast of tariff hikes and some planned to send negotiators to Washington, while the head of the European Union’s executive commission offered mutual reduction of tariffs - while warning that retaliation was an option too. China has already hit back against the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs and similar actions from Europe and elsewhere remain a significant possibility. The U.S. and the EU had a zero-for-zero deal on wine and spirits from 1997 to 2018, and reducing many tariffs to zero was a goal of complex negotiations for a US-Europe free-trade deal before negotiations stalled in 2016.
