Trump says EU could face 35% tariffs if it fails to make $600B investment promises

US president Donald Trump also said that if the EU fails to meet its investment promises under the EU-US deal, the bloc will face tariffs of 35%, Report informs via The Guardian.

“They bought down their tariffs. They paid $600 billion and because of that I reduced their tariffs from thirty percent down to fifteen percent, and a couple of countries came, ‘How come, the EU is paying less than us’, and I said well, because they gave me $600 billion.

And that’s a gift, that’s not like, you know, a loan … they gave us $600 billion that we can invest in anything we want,” he said.

“The details are, $600 billion to invest in anything I want, anything. I can do anything I want with it. And the purpose was, they’ve been, you know ripping us to so many years that it’s time that they pay up and they have to pay up,” US president added.

He then criticized the Swiss prime minister saying she “didn’t want to listen” to his arguments.

Trump then moved on to pharmaceuticals, saying “they make a fortune with pharmaceuticals, and they make in China and Ireland and everything else,” and that he will be announcing separate tariffs on them “within the next week or so.”

“This is a, you know, this is a separate class than the 15% tariffs on sort of everything. These are excluded classes, I like to call them, like steel, aluminum.”

“We’ll be putting an initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals, but in one year, one and a half years maximum, it’s going to go to 150%, and then it’s going to go to 250%, because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country,” he said.