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AmCham Germany President Bernhard Mattes made the comments ahead
of a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel later on Friday, which is expected to
be overshadowed by Trump's plan to impose a border tax on German
cars.
"Even though we currently see the likelihood of a trade war
between the United States and Europe as small, the topic is
still present and not completely off the table," Mattes wrote in
a column in the Handelsblatt business daily.
"We call on those responsible to do everything possible to avoid
a standstill or even a worsening of our trade relations. In a
trade war, there can be no winners as the global economy is too
networked and our supply chains too international."
Mattes noted that the United States has had a trade deficit for
much of the last 35 years with the deficit growing tenfold
during the fastest period of U.S. growth of the last 50 years,
from 1983 to 1987.
"Protectionist measures like punitive customs, import taxes or
the termination of international trade treaties would therefore
only help the U.S. economy temporarily," he wrote.
Germany's 50 billion euro trade surplus with the United States
has been a source of tension between Washington and Berlin.
Trump has warned that the United States will impose a border tax
of 35 percent on cars that German carmaker BMW plans to build at
a new plant in Mexico and export to the U.S. market.
That could prompt Germany to file a suit against the United
States at the World Trade Organization, Economy Minister
Brigitte Zypries told Deutschlandfunk radio.
(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Toby Davis)
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