US Pressures EU to Weaken Green Laws to Save Trade Deal  

The European Union is coming under US pressure to water down its green legislation plan to avoid further tariffs – months after the two parties agreed on a deal to prevent an all-out transatlantic trade war, the Financial Times reported. 

Among the climate laws the EU is being asked to weaken is the requirement for non-EU companies to prepare “climate transition plans.” The US is also asking that the EU change its supply chain environmental laws so that companies from the US and other countries, “with high-quality corporate due diligence,” would be exempt. 

The EU’s corporate due diligence rules, in effect since last year, require that companies operating in the bloc identify any environmental and social harms in their supply chains, in an effort to target pollution and forced labor.  

According to a US government position paper seen by the Financial Times, the Trump administration considers the legislation as a “regulatory over-reach” that puts significant economic and regulatory costs on US companies, while negatively impacting their ability to compete in the EU market. 

US President Donald Trump has already pressured the EU to demonstrate that its digital rules on content moderation and digital competition are not harmful to US tech companies or to change them to avoid tariffs, a move that has cast doubt on whether the trade deal agreed upon in July will hold. 

The deal set tariffs on most EU exports to the US at 15 percent but also allowed room for future concessions from the EU. 

EU officials familiar with the matter have described the request as “a one-way street,” rather than as a negotiation, as the US is not offering concessions in return.  

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said EU regulations were a “red line.” However, the bloc is already scaling back on them, as part of a wider effort to cut red tape but also as a result of complaints from European businesses and governments.  

The effort to simplify the rules, however, is proceeding slowly in the EU parliament, where left-wing lawmakers accused the conservatives of siding with the far right to weaken legislation.