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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks at a press conference in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, China, on September 11, 2024.
Xihao Jiang |
A trade war is not in the interest of the European Union or the United States, Spain’s prime minister told CNBC on Wednesday.
“We share a strong transatlantic bond … our economies are very connected and I think a trade war is not in the interest (of either side), not the US, not the European Union,” Pedro Sanchez told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick. On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland).
“A trade war is a kind of zero-sum win,” he added. “Now more than ever we have to look at how we strengthen our transatlantic relationship.”
Since taking office on Monday, President Donald Trump has repeated his threat to impose tariffs on EU goods entering the United States, telling reporters that the EU is “very, very bad for us. So they’re going to put tariffs in. That’s the only way … you’re going to get justice.” .
On Tuesday, Trump said his administration was discussing implementing an addendum 10% tariff on goods Imported from China, starting in February. He also warned that Mexico and Canada could also be targeted with import taxes.
The European Union’s economic commissioner told CNBC that the bloc would respond to any tariffs imposed by the US.
“If there is a need to defend our economic interests, we will respond in a proportionate manner,” Valdis Dombrovskis told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick.
“We are ready to defend our values and also our interests and rights if necessary,” he added.
European officials were talking to their US counterparts to find a “pragmatic” solution to the tariff dispute, which Dombrovskis stressed could suffer global growth if the economic relationship between the two nations was damaged.
NATO spending
Aside from the trade imbalance with the EU (the EU had a goods surplus with the US in 2023, but a services deficit in the same period) another antagonism between the EU and the US is defense spending.
During his first term, Trump frequently attacked European nations within the Western military alliance Defense for not spending the agreed 2% of gross domestic product (GDP).
In 2018, at the time of Trump’s fury with NATO, only six member states met this goal. In 2024, NATO estimated that 23 members had met the 2% target. Spain was not one of them.
In fact, according to the latest data from NATO, Spain was the country with the lowest spending on defense in 2024, with only 1.28% of its GDP allocated to defense.
Sanchez has defended Madrid’s record in defense spending, saying that he has worked hard to increase the figure.
“Relax, Spain is very committed to achieving this goal of 2% of GDP in defense spending, but let me also say that in the last 10 years, we have also increased our total defense spending by 70%. If we take these figures, in absolute terms, what we can say is that Spain 10th NATO’s main collaborator,” he said.
