U.S. President Donald Trump's protectionist stance may propel Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American economic powers into market-opening alliances with the European Union, a top EU official said.
Jyrki Katainen, a vice president of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said Trump's rejection of multilateral commercial deals and a border-tax threat are giving impetus to the 28-nation bloc's push for free-trade or investment pacts with countries including Japan, China, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
"When there has been some signals to raise protectionism, especially from the U.S. side, the rest of the world seems to be fighting back and saying that this is not our line, this is something which we don't want," Katainen, 45, said in Bloomberg Television interview in Brussels. "This is music to our ears."