EU's Malmstrom confident US auto tariffs won't materialise

DAVOS (Reuters) - European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said on Thursday she was confident that the United States would not follow through on its threat to slap tariffs on cars, but added that the EU was ready to respond if it did.

Imposition of the tariffs would imply that the European Union was a national security threat to the United States, which the 28-nation bloc could not accept, Malmstrom said during a panel event at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim, writing by Tom Miles; Editing by Gareth Jones)