‘We have a very big complaint.’

US President Donald Trump has continued to take aim at the European Union, which he says is an unequal trade relationship.

“From an American perspective, the European Union will make us very, very unfair, very bad,” Trump said in a mock speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

After his inauguration on Monday, Trump’s second term in office has been a major topic of discussion at Davos this year – especially as he worries about trade tariffs with the EU, China, Mexico, Canada and others.

Echoing earlier comments, Trump said in his Davos address: “They make it very difficult to bring products into Europe, but they expect to sell and they sell their products in America. So we have, you know, hundreds of them.” A billion-dollar deficit with the EU, and nobody is happy about that, and we’re going to do something about it.

“They don’t take our agricultural products and they don’t take our cars, but they send us millions of cars. They put tariffs on things that we want to do … We have a very big complaint. The European Union,” he continued.

Trump said in December that he would expect “ultimate tariffs” unless the European Union increased purchases of American oil and gas, something European officials said they were willing to do.

“They want to be able to compete better, and they can’t compete when they can’t go through the approval process quickly. There’s no reason why it can’t go faster … I’m trying. To be constructive because I love Europe,” he added on Thursday.

The US is the largest recipient of EU goods Nearly one-fifth of the Union’s exports.. US The biggest trade deficit It is in machinery and vehicles with the EU, with a difference of 102 billion euros ($106 billion) in 2023. In energy, Washington had a trade surplus of 70 billion euros with the EU; It also has one Significant trade in services.

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, told CNBC in Davos earlier this week that the EU should be ready to drop US tariffs under Trump. She said that not immediately imposing flat tariffs “is a very smart move … because blanket tariffs are not going to give you the results you’re hoping for.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told CNBC that a trade war is not in the interests of either the EU or the US, whose economies are “very closely linked”.