The United States has offered limited exemptions from its disputed steel tariffs in a bid to avert European Union retaliation, but the EU believes that only compensation would prevent the imposition of sanctions.
US Commerce under-secretary Grant Aldonas ruled out any prospect of compensating EU members with trade concessions on other goods for the duties imposed by President George W. Bush in March to protect non-competitive US steel producers.
"I don't want to hold out any hope that we're going to be engaging in any negotiations on compensation," Aldonas told a news conference after four hours of talks with the European Commission's director-general for trade, Peter Carl.
However, he pledged that the United States would agree some exceptions for speciality steel imports that did not threaten U.S. producers before the EU's June 18 deadline for deciding on retaliation, and set more exclusions in early July.
The EU executive's trade spokesman, Anthony Gooch, responded that such partial concessions would not be enough to forestall EU retaliation.
The EU will look at exemptions only as part of a whole compensation package. If the U.S. is not in a position to deliver, the only remaining instrument is counter-measures, he said, stressing June 18 was the deadline to activate sanctions. We don't take Mr Aldonas' no for an answer, he added.