European Union

President Trump’s plan to target countries with so-called reciprocal tariffs is “a step in the wrong direction,” the European Commission said on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The European Union’s executive arm said the bloc has some of the lowest tariffs in the world and sees no justification for increased U.S. tariffs on its exports. Such measures amount to a tax on U.S.
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Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline lost the latest round of its legal fight against European Union gas market rules, in a largely symbolic court defeat for the now-shuttered project, Bloomberg News reported. Gazprom PJSC-controlled Nord Stream 2 should have foreseen that the bloc would use its powers to “extend the internal market rules to cover gas pipelines from third countries,” the General Court said in its re-examination of the case on Wednesday.
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EU Approaches a Forced Labor Ban

The European Union is one step closer to completing a long-awaited bloc-wide ban on the sale of products made with forced labor, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Council of the EU on Tuesday approved a regulation that would forbid throughout the bloc’s 27 member states the sale of goods made with forced labor either within Europe or outside it. The law now goes to the presidents of the European Parliament and the council for signatures. The move comes more than two years after the commission first proposed a regulation, and as the U.S.
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