Promising trade thaw between the US and the EU

Ursula von der Leyen, Joe Biden and Charles Michel yesterday in Brussels OLIVIER HOSLET / EFE

The first bilateral summit of the EU and the US in the Biden era, held on Tuesday in Brussels, has resulted in an agreement to end the trade dispute over Airbus and Boeing. The conflict, the longest in recent commercial history with 17 years of duration, has been a crossfire of subsidies to European and American aeronautics, considered illegal in both cases by the World Trade Organization. Tariff reprisals from both sides already reached a value of 10 billion euros and represented a serious mishap for the transatlantic trade area, the largest in the world.

The summit thus marks the beginning of a de-escalation in trade tension between the EU and the US, disturbingly aggravated during the term of Donald Trump. The first meeting in Brussels has not yet succeeded in dismantling the tariffs introduced by the previous president to protect the steel and aluminum industry from alleged unfair competition from European producers. But, moments before starting the summit, Biden made his position clear: "I have a very different vision from my predecessor," he said.

The presence of the new tenant of the White House guarantees that, barring unforeseen setbacks, the tariff war will not continue. But that is not enough. Brussels and, above all, Washington must now pave the way for the removal of all punitive tariffs introduced during the Trump era. The agreement on Airbus and Boeing should be the model for the recovery of a commercial space free of unnecessary obstacles. Biden must resist the protectionist temptation that has settled in the United States and that nests both Democrats and Republicans.

The last 70 years show that, despite Trump's theories, transatlantic free trade has benefited both sides of the Atlantic.

It is estimated that European investment in the US generates more than three million jobs there.

And the American on European soil, about 4.8 million jobs.

The EU and the US account for almost half of world GDP and almost a third of the world's trade flows.

The political and economic harmony of a bloc of such magnitude must be exploited to set commercial, social or environmental standards that serve as a reference for the rest of the planet.

The trade peace dividend between Brussels and Washington will thus be much more than mere tariff disarmament.

It can and should be the recovery of a multilateralism that Trump left reeling.