Trump demands financial reparations from Europe
Photo: Donald Trump (Getty Images)
US President Donald Trump has imposed additional duties on imported goods from the EU at 20%. He also wants Europe to pay reparations for past years, according to Euronews.
“We put a big tariff on Europe. They are coming to the table; they want to talk, but there’s no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis—not just for the present, but also for the past,” Trump said on board Air Force One on Sunday.
The US president also said he does not plan to negotiate with China. “We have a trillion-dollar trade deficit with China—hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose. Unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal,” he said.
Last week, the US president said he was open to negotiations if other countries offered something “phenomenal.”
Market reaction
Trump's announcement that he would not make a deal with China triggered a new wave of selling in Asian markets on April 7.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell by 5.8%, marking the fourth consecutive session of declines and approaching the sharpest one-day decline since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The US stock market suffered the most from Trump's trade war, where investors lost $6 trillion.
Reparations for the United States
Reparations are payments that one state is obliged to make to another state as a result of damage, usually in the context of war. After the First World War, Germany was obliged to pay reparations to the victorious countries (especially France and the United Kingdom) under the Treaty of Versailles. After World War II, Germany paid reparations to the USSR, Poland, and Israel.
Washington has submitted a new draft agreement on Ukraine's natural resources to Kyiv. According to The Washington Post, the draft looks as if “Ukraine was at war with the United States, lost, was captured, and now has to pay lifelong reparations.”
