EU Tax Chief Disputes Trump’s Claim That VAT Is a Trade Barrier

The European Union’s tax chief said that the bloc’s use of value-added taxes shouldn’t be part of the trade tensions with the Trump administration.

“VAT is clearly not a tariff,” Wopke Hoekstra said Tuesday in an interview. He invited US officials to “compare notes and truly look into the facts.”

President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly accused the EU of treating the US unfairly, has said he plans to penalize countries for non-tariff barriers as part of his broader plans for reciprocal tariffs on wide swaths of US imports, citing VAT as an example.

“We will consider Countries that ...