President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that his administration would soon launch talks with the European Union on a transatlantic free trade pact. U.S. and EU tariffs are low – 5.2 percent for the goods entering the European Union, 3.5 percent in the United States – but the sheer volume of trade between America and the 27 EU members is so large that one-third of all tariffs on U.S. exports to the world are paid to the European Union. Collectively, the EU bloc is the largest U.S. trading partner.
U.S.-EU trade talks
