7/20/2025–|Last update: 22:37 (Mecca time)
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lootnik – today, Sunday, said he is confident of the United States’s ability to conclude a trade agreement with the European Union, but he made it clear that the first of August is a difficult period to start applying customs duties.
Lootnick stated that he had just ended a phone call to European trade negotiators, and that there was a “wide field” of the agreement.
He added – in an interview with “CBS” – that these two largest commercial partners in the world speak with each other “we will reach an agreement. I am sure that we will conclude an agreement.”
On July 12, US President Donald Trump threatened to impose customs duties of 30% on imports from Mexico and the European Union starting from the first of August, after weeks of negotiations with the main commercial partners of the United States that did not succeed in reaching a comprehensive trade agreement.
The US Secretary of Commerce said that this is a difficult deadline.
He told CBS that nothing “prevents countries from talking to us after August 1, but will start paying customs duties on August 1.”