Donald Trump has claimed that the European Union is “nastier” than China as he switched the main target of his world commerce warfare.
Hours after the US agreed a 90-day pause on “tit-for-tat” tariffs with Beijing, the US president advised the EU was not paying its fair proportion.
Particularly, he advised the bloc should pay extra for medication to assist fund decrease costs in America.
The US president instructed reporters: “The European Union is in some ways nastier than China, OK, we simply began with them.
“We have now all of the playing cards. They handled us very unfairly. They promote us 13m vehicles. We promote them none. They promote us their agricultural merchandise. We promote them for just about none. They don’t take our merchandise. That offers us all of the playing cards. And it’s very unfair.
“In order that they’re going to should pay extra for well being care, and we’re going to should pay much less.”
It got here as Mr Trump pledged to slash US drug prices, as he introduced a 30-day deadline for pharma giants to decrease what they cost American sufferers.
A sweeping government order calls on the US well being division to dealer new costs. If a deal will not be reached, a brand new rule will kick in that can tie the worth of what the US pays for medicines to decrease costs paid by different nations.
Critics of US drug costs say that People unfairly subsidise sufferers in different nations, whose well being programs have negotiated decrease costs.
Mr Trump criticised the EU particularly over the stress positioned on pharmaceutical corporations to decrease their costs and mentioned that each nation “ought to pay the identical value”.
He mentioned: “The European Union has been brutal, brutal. And the drug corporations truly instructed me tales. It was simply brutal how they pressured them.”
Mr Trump mentioned his order would scale back the price of prescribed drugs within the US “virtually instantly” by between 50pc and 90pc.
He mentioned: “Large Pharma will both abide by this precept voluntarily or we are going to use the ability of the federal authorities to make sure that we’re paying the identical value as different nations.”
Learn the most recent updates under.