WASHINGTON — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick slammed European Union policies after President Trump announced a 20% tariff on the 27-nation trading bloc — saying that “they hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak.”
Lutnick, a former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, defended Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs, which will start taking effect April 5, by pointing to the allegedly unfair treatment of US goods in global trade.
“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak. It’s unbelievable,” Lutnick told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday night.
“We can’t sell corn to India. We can’t sell rice to Asia. Why in the world do we let these people sell their cars? 94% of cars in Japan are made in Japan.”
Trump’s administration assessed the steepest new tariffs on jurisdictions with which the US has trade deficits and which have higher tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
The EU’s agricultural restrictions include a ban on the use of substances that provoke hormonal responses in cattle and rules that conflict with US industry-standard microbial washes for chicken.
In 2015, the EU lifted a blanket ban on US beef that had been in place for 15 years due to concerns about “mad cow” disease and in 2019 agreed to create and gradually expand a duty-free quota for US beef imports from 18,500 metric tons that year up to 35,000 metric tons by 2026.
But US beef exports to the EU haven’t met the quota, which still imposes the hormonal restriction.
The quota utilization rate in 2022 was just 52.9%, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Lutnick’s description of American beef as superior is a common perception and has some evidentiary basis.
“EU consumption of beef has been in decline for 20 years. This may be, at least in part, due to inconsistencies in eating quality, meaning that the customers cannot be sure of the quality they are purchasing,” says a 2022 academic article in “Animal: The International Journal of Animal Biosciences.”
