Szijjártó blames Brussels for Trump's 25 percent tariffs on European products

Since last November, the whole world has been aware that the United States has elected a patriotic president. The whole world, including Brussels and the von der Leyen-led European Commission, knew that Donald Trump wanted balanced trade relations. Those in Brussels also knew perfectly well that if they did nothing, Washington would impose tariffs", Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Péter Szijjártó began his post on his social media page.

The Foreign Minister's comments came after Donald Trump's first cabinet meeting of his second term (also attended by Elon Musk), in which he said he would impose a 25 percent tariff on products made in the European Union.

Trump said the decision had already been made, with details to be announced later, but that in general there will be a 25 per cent tariff on "all cars and everything else from the EU", the Financial Times quotes the president as saying. Trump added that he believes the EU was established purely "to screw the United States".

“They knew, and yet they did nothing. Because they're incompetent and most of all, they're cowards.”

– Szijjártó continued in his post. According to him, those in Brussels are cowards because "for eight years they have been berating Donald Trump and now they don't dare to face him".

Péter Szijjártó did not mention in his post that the Hungarian Prime Minister has openly campaigned for Trump in the US election campaigns, and that he has said that it would be good for the world and for the Hungarian economy if Trump won.

According to Szijjártó, it is not because of Trump's tariffs, but because of the "Von der Leyen-led Brussels' administration" that the European economy is now taking another hit. According to the minister, after China, the Von der Leyen administration has now isolated the European economy from the US economy as well.

"It could have been so simple: just a few measures, just a few gestures would have sufficed. We even made a proposal: the European Union should have reduced the tariff on the sale of American cars to Europe from 10% to 2.5%, because that is the tariff on the sale of European cars to America," he wrote.

Szijjártó concluded that the Brussels bureaucracy was "killing the European economy". To support this, the minister cited the sanctions against Russia, the tariffs on Chinese electric cars and the EU's inability to negotiate with the US.

"What Brussels has botched will now have to be fixed here, in Budapest: over the coming months, we will continue bilateral negotiations with the US administration in order to build the best, most successful Hungarian-American economic cooperation ever" he wrote.