The Government has again appealed to Brussels today to negotiate "firmly" with the US and try to avoid applying the tariffs announced by Donald Trump on more than a thousand agri-food products, including Spanish oils, cheeses and wine .

The acting Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has had the first meeting of the two planned this week with those affected by these tariffs. It has been with the autonomous communities and has specified that the economic impact would be around 765 million euros for the Spanish agri-food sector.

Although in the beginning there had been talk of exports worth 1,000 million, this new figure is more concrete, since it is about 2018 data. The wine, oil, olives and citrus sectors are the most affected by tariffs, although they are also listed in The list of products such as mussels, clams or octopus and squid preparations.

"It is difficult to identify all the items, we handle a figure of 1,000 million, but if we refer to 2018, it would be 764.5 million euros, " said Planas, who has again qualified these rates as unacceptable. " The agri-food sector is not the object of this dispute, which is for the aeronautical sector, and does not have to be the victim of this commercial conflict," he said.

The minister explained that Spain will ask the EU that, if an agreement with Washington is finally not reached at the Geneva meeting on October 14, three measures announced by Planas last Friday after calling the chapter to the American ambassador.

The three measures are for Brussels to mobilize community resources planned for agricultural crises, to cover the financial and private storage costs of olive oil, and to activate promotional measures in third countries for the products concerned.

Tomorrow it will be the turn of the other sectors involved: producers, farmers and agricultural associations. The Government trusts that the EU can negotiate with the US to cancel, totally or partially, the list of products affected.

The main regions affected by the impending tariffs have warned today of the impact this will have on the respective regional economies.

Manchego and lemon cheese

Castilla-La Mancha, for example, has exposed the problem it would generate with Manchego cheese. 30% of the annual turnover of this emblematic product of the region is exported to the United States. In total, 55 million are at stake. This is the denomination of origin of cheese with more turnover in our country, with 60% of total sales.

This was stated by the Minister of Agriculture, Water and Rural Development of Castilla-La Mancha, Francisco Martínez Arroyo, before entering the meeting.

Andalusia, an olive oil producing region, has requested that a common deal be made with Brussels to avoid these rates and has demanded that an exchange of products that could be affected not be accepted, that is, that the list of change of others.

"We ask that you do not use agricultural products as hostages of other issues that do not have to do, that we try to explain in Europe that this issue has nothing to do with the agricultural sector," said the Andalusian Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Development Carmen Crespo

For Murcia, Spain's main lemon producer, the rates would directly affect the seven million tons of this product that it exports to the US, which also plans to double this amount in the 2019-2010 season.

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