The EU has succumbed to US gas demands in an attempt to stop a trade war
Following the recent Nato conference where Angela Merkel was seen talking with Donald Trump, the EU has caved to the US’s demands. The US President was extremely critical of Germany’s energy ties with Russia at Nato and voiced these concerns loudly. It seems that since this conference, their concerns have only grown, to a point where the European Union felt that their best choice was to agree to the markers the US have set regarding gas.
This news comes as a bid to cool down trade market tensions with one of the world’s largest gas economies, the US. President Donald Trump put soybeans and gas prices at the top of his list to discuss formerly with the EU. He wanted the EU to purchase these goods from them at a revised price. Trump’s wishes are the EU’s demands as they agree to buy more product from him with something that’s being described as a large shopping list.
Europe’s plans to purchase more US gas were brought to light just before key trade talks were confirmed for August 20th. Prior talks have been seen to end up in tit-for-tat like tariffs and situations regarding billions of imports that have been issued and monitored by the US and EU in more recent times. Crunch talks eventually hit a wall, in which only one party would get what they really wanted, namely, in this case, the US.
In a more recent press conference Donald Trump stated that, “We agreed to a strengthened and strengthening of our strategic cooperation with respect to energy. The European Union wants to import more liquefied natural gas, LNG, from the United States and they’re going to be a very very big buyer. We’re going to make it much easier for them, but they’re going to be a massive buyer of LNG.”. His goals to ‘make America’s business sector great again’ are clear and seem, so far, to be in good stead of achieving that target.
Mina Andreeva the deputy chief spokeswoman for the EU commission said that “The 14 projects would still need the approval of the individual financing programmes to get the grants, so this is indeed not something that could have been taken for granted prior to the commitment that President Juncker gave yesterday to President Trump,”. It is becoming clear that there are still details that the two need to iron out before any definite changes are made official. However, so far it seems to be a score for Trump and his best interests.
