00:00Let's get back to our top story. President Trump threatening 50 percent tariffs on the EU starting June 1st. Joining us now from Europe, Bloomberg's Brendan Murray.
00:08Brendan, welcome back to the program, sir. Only a few hours ago we were talking about the situation between the EU and the U.S. This is difficult to deal with.
00:16The president says the Europeans have been very difficult. Brendan, what is the state of play with conversations?
00:21Well, the state of play is that neither side has agreed to the terms that the other side has put forth.
00:29So we're pretty much at loggerheads. There's going to be a phone call later today between the trade negotiating teams in Brussels and in Washington.
00:37And they're going to try to get things on track. But at the moment, the EU-U.S. trade talks are at a standstill.
00:44And you saw what the president tweeted this morning, a 50 percent tariff on on European imports would would, you know, would be pretty devastating to to that to that relationship.
00:55So I don't know if that was a sort of motivational attempt to for the president to try to get Europe to see things more the way he wants them to.
01:06He listed in this in this post on on on true social, the the VAT tax and and stiff corporate punishments and something he something about, you know, monetary issues.
01:19And so it's kind of vague language, but a pretty much of a laundry list that he wants Europe to address.
01:27Apparently, Europe's not willing to do so at this point.
01:29Brendan, do we have a sense of what the catalyst was for this truth this morning?
01:33You talked about how it's unclear whether this is just to get some more concessions.
01:37But is there any sense of what triggered it?
01:40Yeah, you know, you could you could make a case that it's this it's this conversation that they're going to two sides are going to have today to kind of add some, you know, fresh, you know, threats to the to to those talks.
01:52President Chinese President Xi Jinping has been calling around to European leaders this week saying, hey, let's let's try to keep our relationships close.
02:03on the economic front. So it's hard to say what the motivation was.
02:07But there was definitely a reminder this morning that the president wants to send that that that that that he still wields this terror threat.
02:15And and he can do some economic damage with it if he follows through. Now, these are we've seen him make big threats like this before and pull back.
02:22So we'll have to wait and see if that's what happens in this case.
02:25Brendan, for those following at home, do we know when that call is going to take place?
02:28We don't know. It's sometime, you know, before early or you would think in the first half of the U.S. day, given the time difference.
02:37But we don't know. We will. Our reporters will be will be hitting the phones, trying to get readouts about what exactly they agree or still disagree on.
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