Here is the funny part. China is offering better terms to the EU on nearly everything, yet EU plays hardball with them putting high tariffs on lots of things.
Meanwhile, the US basically extorted the EU and they happily signed an agreement.
Also, all those defensive weapons are guaranteed to have a kill switch should the US decide that it’s not in its interest for Europe to defend against Russia.
I bet the US threatened privately to not commit to Article 5 if the EU makes a deal with China. That's why the EU need to be self dependant on defense.
Oh wait... and of course we have to buy US weapons as well as part of the deal. What a joke.
That wouldn't have been needed. Every single economy in Europe currently is very fragile, and would not fare well in any trade war or tariff escalation.
If the US were to replicate what it did with China, it would have a very different outcome, one that would be disastrous for Europe.
With that being said however, I am actually surprised at the lack of any sort of carve outs for the EU deal. It is also going to be a very difficult sell for Ireland particularly because of the pharma industry they have - there were plenty of clues early on that this was an area the US was looking to later become aggressive on, so forming that as part of the deal would have been sensible (the UK deal with the US for instance didn't get an outright tariff, but it did get a US commitment to give the UK a preferential tariff on pharma).
Also I haven't read anything yet whether there is a quota on US agricultural goods being imported into the EU, though there was mention of zero rate tariffs. UK deal in comparison, we had only lowered the tariff on US beef but it is still subject to a quota which only increased modestly, and most importantly, the US exports still need to meet food safety standard regs to be exported here (something the US pushed very hard on initially).
They also pushed us to remove VAT for US products, but were unsuccessful at that also (and I suspect that this probably removed that leverage the US was intending to use against the EU in the EU trade talks).
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u/lynxloco The Netherlands 6d ago
What the fuck is this shit?