Trump’s tariffs to hit €5.3 billion in Portuguese exports // Tuk-tuk restrictions begin in central Lisbon and Porto

Portuguese news in English on Tuesday, April 8, 2025.

Trump’s tariffs to hit €5.3 billion in Portuguese exports

I know you’ve been bombarded by Trump news, particularly in the last week, but I’m going to cover the tariffs in some depth through the lens of how they’re likely to affect you here in Portugal. There’s also some good English analysis on the broader European impacts I’ll link out to at the bottom.

US President Donald Trump’s 20% tariffs on goods from the European Union are expected to slow economic growth and increase inflation, with Portugal unlikely to escape the consequences, Expresso reports. Last year, Portugal exported a record €5.3 billion in goods to the US, equivalent to almost 2% of GDP. Exports to the US have been rising since 2000, dramatically since the financial crisis. While the US was Portugal’s largest market outside of the EU, it received only 6.7% of the country’s total exports, much lower than Spain (25.9%), Germany (12.4%) and France (12.2%). Economics professor Paulo Trigo Pereira said there was “no doubt” the tariffs would worsen growth and inflation but he didn’t expect Portugal’s exports to be hit too badly directly. That’s because tourism is expected to remain strong and many exports, such as footwear and wine, are high quality and cheap, meaning they can better handle increased tariffs. But economists warn there will also be secondary effects: Germany’s economy is expected to be among the worst hit by the tariffs, hitting both goods re-exported to the US (e.g. cars made of parts assembled in Portugal) and general demand for Portuguese goods in a German economic slump.

Photo: Daniela Sunde-Brown

Portugal’s biggest exports to the US are fuel, tyres, medication, cork, furniture, footwear, paper, wine, cutlery, home textiles, clothes and metal products, Público reports. There’s another threat to businesses but it could bring significant benefits for you and other European consumers, Público reports. Trump’s much higher tariffs on China, now totalling 54%, are expected to send an avalanche of cheap Chinese products flowing into Europe as Beijing looks for alternatives to the US. That would bring increased competition, theoretically improving quality and lowering prices, thus helping to ease some inflation concerns. But there are fears the influx will be so strong it sends a lot of European businesses bust, prompting the EU to consider more protectionist trade barriers. The areas most affected are expected to be electronics, machines and metals.

The European Commission yesterday proposed 25% retaliatory tariffs on some US imports, saying it would prefer to negotiate and that it had offered a “zero-for-zero” tariff deal, Reuters reports, in English. Stocks continued to fall globally for a fourth day in reaction to the tariffs, with global oil prices plummeting and the Euro surging, Público reports. About 700 Americans living in Portugal gathered in Lisbon and Porto at the weekend to protest the Trump administration and Elon Musk, Euronews reports. It was part of the “Hands Off! movement that accuses the president and his tech billionaire key adviser Elon Musk of destroying American democracy and creating a dictatorship.

Photo: @ArtCandee/X

You can read more in English about a fact check on Trump’s claims about European tariffs, from Euronews; and a basic explainer of what tariffs are and how they work, from the BBC.