By Philip Blenkinsop and Francesco Canepa
BRUSSELS, April 30 (Reuters) - The European Union and South American bloc Mercosur will implement on Friday a contentious free trade agreement that the EU in particular hopes will benefit exporters and calm critics, even if it cannot fully offset the blow from U.S. tariffs.
Backers including Germany and Spain say the agreement will help compensate for the hit from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and reduce reliance on China for critical minerals. France
and other critics argue it will increase imports of cheap beef and sugar and undercut domestic farmers, and environmentalists say it will increase rainforest destruction.
Either way, economists caution that the economic gains from this pact and others concluded in recent months by the EU will be modest and are unlikely to fully make up for lost U.S. trade.
The European Parliament, whose approval is required, voted in January to challenge the agreement in the EU's top court, which could take up to two years to rule, but the European Commission decided to provisionally apply the deal from May 1.
Supporters hope the EU's largest ever agreement in terms of tariff reductions, which took 25 years to negotiate, will swiftly benefit EU exporters so that when the EU assembly does vote, perhaps in two years' time, the advantages will be clear.
TRUMP PROMPTS TRADE DEAL DASH
Alongside Mercosur, the EU has rushed to conclude trade agreements with India, Indonesia, Australia and Mexico since Trump's re-election.
The accords help to shore up free trade at a time when Trump's tariffs and Chinese export curbs on critical minerals undermine a rules-based global order.
The European bloc is also hoping the agreements will help offset a decline in exports to the United States of 15% or more and a hit to GDP of some 0.3% this year alone.
However, Carsten Brzeski, global head of Macro at ING Research, said it was hard to see the new trade relationships replacing the United States.
"Put simply, GDP per capita in the U.S. is by far larger than in these new trading partners," he said.
The European Commission has estimated the Mercosur agreement will boost EU GDP by 0.05% in 2040, while the India agreement, which the EU has dubbed the "mother of all deals", could add 0.1% to GDP, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Those benefits are also at least a decade away, when the deals are fully implemented, whereas pain from Trump's tariffs has been immediate.
CHINA ALREADY THERE
EU companies will also face fierce competition in these markets, where Chinese rivals have been steadily building a presence for two decades.
"The elephant in the room is China," said Lucrezia Reichlin, professor of economics at the London Business School.
"And this is not just about tariffs. If you look at what China has done in Asia and in Africa, it has been about investment and the energy transition, too."
Maximiliano Mendez-Parra, principal research fellow at ODI Global, said much had changed since he co-authored a report for the European Commission in December 2020 that forecast a 0.1% increase in EU GDP from the EU-Mercosur deal. Since then China has ramped up sales of vehicles and machinery, items that the EU wants to export, Mendez-Parra said.
Tariff reductions should help EU companies compete more effectively against often low prices of Chinese goods, but the challenges are increasing.
China has already begun the task of offsetting U.S. tariffs, reporting a record trade surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion in 2025, led by booming exports to non-U.S. markets.
Global Trade Alert estimated that U.S. tariffs led to some $150 billion of Chinese exports being redirected, with ASEAN countries absorbing more than $70 billion of extra Chinese goods, and sharp increases, too, for Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the Gulf.
So, while the EU's trade accords should help, the EU will not offset lost U.S. exports without looking internally. Some 60% of EU exports are from one EU country to another and a more efficient and competitive single market could easily compensate.
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop and Francesco Canepa; Editing by Tom Hogue)
