Greece does not want a trade war with the US, says finance minister

Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said Greece does not want a trade war with the United States, at the start of the informal ECOFIN meeting in Warsaw on Saturday.

“We do not want a trade war with the United States. We believe that we must negotiate a mutually advantageous solution,” he told journalists as he arrived for the meeting. “We believe that a fair rules-based international order is the ultimate choice of the European Union and should be the policy of all international partners.”

He added, however, that there are “specific solutions of policies we must follow at any possible outcome,” such as to expand trade agreements with countries like India. “At the same time we should pursue the full range of solutions proposed by the [Mario] Draghi and [Enrico] Letta reports, removing the full range of barriers that already exist in European economies,” he said.