<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Spanish Minister of Economy and Trade, Carlos Cuerpo, defended this Monday in Luxembourg the implementation of "an instrument" to help "at the European level" companies and sectors affected by the new US tariffs and warned that the EU's response should not affect North American products "that are not easily substitutable" for European companies.</strong></h4> "The message from Europe must be clear: it must be a message of confidence and unity, particularly in these times of such high uncertainty where we are already seeing the real impact of these measures," declared Cuerpo upon his arrival at the meeting of European Union trade ministers. "We have had three days of very significant declines in the stock market," he recalled. “The message that the stock markets are sending globally is a very clear message that we are facing an economic policy that is harmful, and harmful to everyone globally,” he added. Therefore, he continued, it is necessary “to assure consumers, businesses, and industries that Europe will defend them and protect their interests.” “When we talk about protecting the interests of our industries and our businesses, what we want is for Europe to complement the response that the Member States can provide,” he stated. “Spain, from the very beginning, has implemented a safety net for potentially affected sectors, and we believe there must also be an instrument to help affected companies and sectors at the European level, and that is what we are going to propose today,” he announced. In any case, Cuerpo advocated a “negotiated solution” that would be “a benefit for our economies” because “we have all been benefiting for years from this mutual exchange, from this open relationship between the United States and Europe, and this has to be the way forward.” Therefore, the minister warned, it must be made "very clear" that Europe "does not want this trade conflict and that we are only responding to the unjustified and totally arbitrary measures that have been put on the table." "Our response will always be fair and proportionate," because "we do not want to escalate any conflict and we are only responding," Cuerpo stated. He also warned that the response measures adopted by the EU should have no impact, or should have a "minimal" impact, on European sectors and industries, so that the tariffs imposed by Europe on US products do not further harm European producers, "particularly if they lack the capacity to diversify these imports." In this regard, Carlos Cuerpo announced that Spain has forwarded to the European Commission its "specific requests for products that we believe are not easily substitutable by Spanish industries so that, as I said before, we minimize the impact of these tariffs on our producers and our industries." "I think it's premature to talk about what the final list will be. We need to keep moving forward in the coming days to definitively finalize it, but again, we have to be smart and have a strategy that minimizes the impact on our industries and sends a very clear message that we don't want an escalation," he insisted.
