US failed to address trade ‘imbalance’ with EU before Trump, says ambassador

Gordon Sondland sparred with fellow panellist over relations with China

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker greets US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland next to White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, at the EU ComShow more

Several US administrations prior to President Donald Trump’s failed to address the trade imbalance between the European Union and America, according to the country’s ambassador to the bloc.

Speaking at the GLOBSEC 2019 Bratislava Forum on Friday, Gordon Sondland, the US Ambassador to the EU, likened Brussels and Washington to two competing businesses, but said he was open to more collaboration between the two sides.

“President Trump sees Europe as a competitor, not a foe and I say ‘competitor’ in the best sense of the word,” he said. “Where two businesses compete and they’re great businesses – they both are growing the technology and the market together but in many ways it can be a zero sum game. A dollar goes to one business, may go to the other as well but it may not.”

He said that Mr Trump during his presidency had been trying to solve “a structural imbalance” between the EU and the US, which has plagued past administrations.

Mr Sondland added: “Regulation in the EU has proliferated in exponential fashion whereas regulation in the US has been a little bit more linear. The trade deficit has gone up and I know the first thing that will happen when I say that is that people will say it’s due to savings rates, it’s due to this and it’s due to that, it’s not because the European Union sells more products to the United States than the United States sells to Europe. But that’s not true; it is exactly what is occurring.”

Despite their trade differences, he said that the US shares values with the EU – such as product quality, safety and rule of law – that it does not hold with the likes of China and Russia. The ambassador pointed out that the EU and the US have over $1 trillion of trade and have a combined GDP of $40 trillion.

Mr Sondland sparred with fellow panellist, Hongjun Yu, over China’s relationship with the US.

The ambassador branded Huawei as “an organ of the Chinese government”, adding “they can dress themselves up as a separate private corporation but they are not”.

“So in the US we want the technology wherever we can get it, other than China, because we don’t want our national secrets, the control of our cars, our hospitals, our government, our schools, our cities under Chinese control. We’re just not willing to do it, full stop.”

Mr Yu, the former Vice Minister of International Department, Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, fired back: “If you’re afraid of losing your security for using a Huawei product, I think you really lack confidence. We Chinese are using the iPhones but we never feel unsafe.”

He added that Huawei has been open to collaborate with foreign companies and has quickly advancing technology.