Marietje Schaake, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – Mr President, trade rules and negotiations are complex. We saw this during years of negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), negotiations that are stalled after a dramatic change in the American approach. Normally trade arrangements are certainly not the kind of topic to be shaped in a number of angry tweets one morning – tweets that sent stock markets plummeting and Gary Cohn resigning.

We condemn the harsh accusations in the EU’s direction and frankly are puzzled by what we see. Adding insult to injury, the President’s tweets now also speculate about imposing tariffs on European cars and other accusations. For a country that exports so many German cars, this is at least a bad business proposition. Many jobs are created in the US by European companies and vice versa. We don’t live in a zero-sum world but we are actually mutually dependent.

Senior officials have suggested national security is the reason to impose broad steel and aluminium tariffs also in Europe, and as allies we believe these arguments are misguided and not justified.

The same goes for the notion that individual Member States may negotiate exemptions. American hints at undermining the EU as well as British hints at being open to special treatment can only be read as being made in bad faith and must be challenged, where the British governments will find out soon, if necessary, what the benefits of a common approach globally in the EU are (or were, in their case).

For decades the US and the EU have worked together to craft a rules-based system: rules for human rights, war and peace, and also trade. Does that mean that the system or the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is perfect? Not at all. But does history suggest that our citizens benefit from shaping globalisation, from being rule makers instead of rule takers? Absolutely. That is precisely what makes the soundbites of the current US administration so disturbing. Right at the time we need to work together as the liberal democracies of this world to curb unfair trade practices of China and others, we are divided.

As Vice-President of the Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue, I look to members of Congress in particular for their leadership and solid affirmation of the Transatlantic Relation.

We do not need a trade war and will do what we can to stop it. The Commission has my Group’s full support as well. But we are ready to adapt proportionate and WTO-compliance countermeasures when it’s necessary.