US President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to impose a 200 percent tariff on all "wines, champagne and alcoholic products" from France and other EU countries.
The threat comes after the White House imposed global tariffs on steel and aluminum and the EU announced that it was preparing its own retaliatory tariffs. They will be imposed in two stages in April, the European Commission announced on Wednesday morning.
In his Truth Social post, Trump claimed that the EU had "imposed a nasty 50 percent tariff on whisky", although the EU tariff on bourbon will only come into effect on April 1.
Earlier, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said that the Trump administration did not seem committed to efforts to prevent a trade war with the European Union.
Šefčovič, who traveled to Washington last month to start a dialogue to prevent "unnecessary pain from measures and countermeasures", indicated that he saw no willingness to compromise on the part of the United States.