Washington, May 9 (EFE).- The Spanish Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, conveyed this Tuesday to his US counterpart, Tom Vilsack, his concern about the maintenance of tariffs on black table olives and said he expected of the country a prompt solution in this regard.
“Obviously we hope that this issue is resolved. It is a small cloud in some excellent global bilateral relations that we have strategically and also politically, economically and culturally, two countries like the United States and Spain”, he commented to the Spanish press in Washington.
Planas has participated in the US capital in the international summit on innovation in agriculture AIM and has also held bilateral meetings with Vilsack, with his counterparts from Canada and the United Kingdom, Marie-Claude Bibeau and Mark Spencer, or with the special envoy of United States for Climate, John Kerry, among others.
The United States has imposed a 35% tariff on Spanish olives since 2018, a measure against which the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in 2021.
The United States later committed to the European Union (EU) to adapt its legislation before January 14, 2023, but last September there was a new ruling in the United States. in favor of the imposition of the tariff on that product that returned to questioning aid to agriculture from the European Union.
Planas advanced on January 30 in Brussels that Spain was asking the European Commission to bring the United States back to the WTO for said tariffs.
The minister wrote about it “a few weeks ago” to the Executive Vice President of the EC and Head of Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis. “He has already activated the negotiations by announcing to the United States that he would again activate the negotiations before the WTO, and we obviously hope that this issue will be resolved,” he said on Tuesday.
Planas indicated that he has conveyed to the US secretary the Spanish interest “in providing a prompt and satisfactory solution to this issue.”
This same Tuesday the Spanish Association of Exporters and Industrialists of Table Olives (Asemesa) expressed its distrust regarding the US eliminating the tariffs imposed more than five years ago on Spanish black olives unless the European Union forces it to withdrawal.
The United States is a “preferred destination” for Spanish exports, with olive oil in first place and then “wine and other products”, recalled the minister from Washington, who described his visit as “very positive and very constructive”. work to the country
