BRD Analysis: How Romania is affected by Trump's new tariffs, which came into force

President Trump’s supplimentary tariffs for all steel and aluminium imports from the US came into force on Wednesday, amplifying the global commercial conflict and affecting Romania directly and indirectly.   Romanian exports to the US of iron and stainless steel, together with products made from them represent 13.79% of the total of our exports to the US, shows an analysis made by BRD (Romanian Development Bank). As these total exports Romania- US were last year 3.8 billion it means that iron and stainless steel commerce were at least over 500 million American dollars, writes http://hotnews.ro/   The US is the 14th best buyer of Romanian products, our exports to the US being comparable in value to those from the relation with the Republic of Moldova, namely over two billion euro in 2023, according to the data of the Statistics consulted by HotNews. The two countries’ trade balances have been in surplus in Romania’s favour since 2010. The US President’s imposition of tariff barriers will affect Romania’s trade with America.   The largest exports are in the category Electrical machinery and equipment, more precisely in the subcategory "Switchboards, panels, consoles, desks, consoles, other supports for controlling/distributing electricity" - over 216 million euro. In second place for Romanian exports to the USA we find electric motors and generators, with almost €65 million annually.   Under the somewhat strange-sounding category "Electrical machines and apparatus having a function of their own, not elsewhere specified or included" are actually included particle accelerators, electrical signal generators, electrolysis apparatus, electronic cigarettes and other vaporisation devices.   As a result, the increase of tariffs to products imported by the US from the EU will affect negatively a part of the Romanian exports. For 2024, exports of Romanian goods to America are estimated at 0.7% of Romania’s GDP or 2.4 billion euro. The importance of how much exports of goods from Romania to the US will depend on the value of the tariffs imposed by Trump and the degree of sensitivity of exports to the US to tax increases.   Romania will be affected indirectly as well. The most affected by the tariffs imposed by Trump is Germany which is our main European commercial partner. When Germany sneezes, Romania gets the flu as they say. According to the governor of the Central Bank of Germany, the impact of the Trump tariffs will cost the German economy almost 1.4 percentage point to economic increase. Or, this is translated into weakening of the foreign demand, a part of this demand being destined to Romania.   The German government has revised its growth forecast for 2025 to 0.3% from 1.1% last autumn, as Europe's largest economy has experienced two consecutive years of recession in 2023 and 2024.