Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the European Union has some “internal matters” to sort out before the bloc can enter into trade negotiations with the U.S., singling out a tax on digital services levied by some countries.
“We’re negotiating with a lot of different interests,” Bessent said Tuesday during a briefing at the White House. “Some of the European countries have put on an unfair digital service tax” on the U.S., he said.
The U.S. has for years objected to moves by foreign countries that multiple administrations have argued unfairly target American technology giants like Amazon.com Inc. and Google owner Alphabet Inc. Bessent singled out France and Italy on Tuesday.
“Other countries, Germany and Poland, don’t have that — we want to see that unfair tax on one of America’s great industries removed,” the Treasury chief continued. “It’s going to be a give-and-take. They have some internal matters to decide before they can engage in an external negotiation.”
The EU’s economy chief, Valdis Dombrovskis, said in a Bloomberg Television interview Monday that there’s “still lots of ground to cover” in the talks. He also said in a tweet that he’d had a “cordial and candid” meeting with Bessent in Washington last week, comparing notes on the impact of U.S. tariffs.
Bessent said he has been mostly involved in negotiations with Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea. A few days before President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on higher tariffs for dozens of trading partners, Bessent said he was opening negotiations with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his cabinet.
“These governments actually want to have the framework of a trade deal done before they go into elections, to show that they have successfully negotiated with the United States,” Bessent said in response to a question about domestic pressures in Japan, South Korea and Canada. “So we are finding that they are actually much more keen to come to the table, get this done and then go home and campaign on it.”
