Newly manufactured automobiles sit on the dockside at the port of Barcelona (Photo: Bloomberg)

At a meeting of the European Council in Brussels, EU ambassadors said the upcoming talks with the US need to discuss cutting tariffs for EU industrial products and making it easier for companies to show that their products meet EU or US standards. France had raised objections until the last moment. With next month’s European Parliament election looming, President Emmanuel Macron feared that the talks would revive a politically toxic trade debate that plagued previous negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.