Exports of Belgian products to the United States are at risk of becoming up to €4 billion more expensive due to US President Donald Trump's import tariffs.
For the first time, Belgium's Economy Ministry calculated the impact of Trump's tariffs on exports from Belgian companies to the US. In 2024 (the year before Trump began his second term), those exports amounted to €27.4 billion.
Last year, traders and companies in the US that imported products from Belgium had to pay a total of €258 million in duties. Based on the tariffs that were in effect two weeks ago (on 1 October), the Ministry estimated that the duties could reach between €4.17 billion and €4.38 billion this year, De Tijd reports.
This is a projection for all of 2025, assuming the same trade volume as in 2024. In relative terms, this means that exporting Belgian products to the US could become up to 17 times more expensive than a year ago.
For no other sector is the impact of US import tariffs greater than for the pharmaceutical industry, which exported €15.24 billion to the US in 2024, according to the study – that is more than half of the Belgian total. Tariffs there rose from €300,000 last year to a potential €2.29 billion this year.
