Germany’s Merz eyes car tariff offsetting mechanism after Trump talks

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BERLIN (Reuters) -German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Friday that he would pursue a deal under which U.S. cars could be imported into Europe duty free in exchange for tariff waivers on the same number of vehicles exported to the United States.

Speaking at an event in Berlin just hours after his inaugural trip to Washington for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump, Merz said: “We have to see if we can come up with an offset rule or something along those lines.”

According to data from European auto association ACEA, nearly 758,000 cars worth 38.9 billion euros ($44.25 billion) were exported to the U.S. from Europe, more than four times as many as in the other direction.

German carmakers, most notably BMW and Mercedes-Benz, operate major U.S. production plants and export substantial volumes to other markets around the world, not just Europe.

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius a day earlier proposed a similar mechanism whereby U.S. cars could be imported into Europe duty free in exchange for waivers on the same number of vehicles EU automakers export to the United States.

“We agreed that we will have two representatives between the White House and the chancellery who will now talk intensively with each other about German-American trade relations,” Merz added.

He said trade negotiations with the U.S. remained within the remit of the European Union, however, and that later on Friday he would speak to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to brief her on the outcome of his talks with Trump.

The news comes after sources told Reuters last month that Mercedes-Benz and German rivals BMW and Volkswagen were in talks with Washington over a possible import tariff deal.

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(Reporting by Andreas Rinke; Writing by Friederike Heine and Christoph Steitz; Editing by Ludwig Burger, Kirsten Donovan)