Lithuanian president, govt to go to Japan, Vietnam in June to help businesses find markets

VILNIUS - Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda plans to travel to Japan and Vietnam in June together with the country's government and business representatives to help Lithuanian companies find new markets and new partners in response to the United States tariffs on imports from the European Union.

"We need to help businesses to switch and find new trade routes. (...) The president plans to go on business missions to Tokyo and Hanoi together with government representatives as early as June," Irena Segaloviciene, the presidential advisor on economic and social policy, told the Ziniu Radijas news radio on Tuesday.

In her words, the Economy and Innovation Ministry has drawn up a 20 million euro plan to help businesses adapt, and further promotion of this should be foreseen as part of the drawing up of next year's state budget.

However, she said, while the EU is also already working on its response to Washington's tariffs, the bloc must maintain a "dialogue path".

"We are now entering, collectively, not only an era of tariff wars, but also, we hope, a period of new economic trade agreements," Segaloviciene underlined, adding that tariffs increase inflation, damage international trade and pose structural challenges to economies.

The presidential advisor pointed out, however, that Europe's economy is incomparably stronger since the trade wars of the 20th century.

"Today, we have a single market of almost 500 million consumers, which has already shown its strength, which also overcome the COVID-19 pandemic together, and it gas seriously united on sanctions against Russia, on aid to Ukraine, and we have no doubt that it will unite to help European producers when needed," Segaloviciene said.

Last week, the US last week announced plans to impose tariffs on various countries around the world, including a 20 percent import tariff on the EU.

Lithuania's direct exports to the US account for around 6.8 percent of total exports of Lithuanian goods and were valued at 1.6 billion euros last year.

The central Bank of Lithuania estimates that a possible trade war between the US and the EU would reduce Lithuania's economic growth by 0.33-1.3 percentage points over four years.