(Bloomberg) — President-elect Donald Trump has threatened the European Union with tariffs if its member countries don’t buy more American oil and gas.
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“I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas. Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!,” he said on Truth Social.
The US is the world’s largest producer of crude oil and the biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas. LNG buyers — including the EU and Vietnam — have already talked about purchasing more fuel from the US, in part to deter the threat of tariffs.
Trump has threatened tariffs against countries from China to Canada, and is particularly focused on nations that have trade deficits with the US. Europe is already the top destination for American LNG, with more than half of the deliveries going to the continent last year.
US has also become a major exporter of crude oil over the past decade or so, sending so-called light as well as medium density varieties to Canada and also countries across Europe and Asia.
–With assistance from Serene Cheong and Shoko Oda.
(Updates with details of US oil exports in the fifth paragraph. A previous version corrected sanctions to tariffs in headline.)
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