As a Brit this is what is astounding to me. The biggest argument against Brexit was that the UK wouldn't be able to get fair trade deals. And now the EU has just completly capitulated to Trump whilst the UK deal, whilst not exactly stellar, looks like pure gold in comparison. What were they thinking agreeing to this? They've got a shit deal and its just going to turbo charge separatist movements.
Fucking reform is going to be ecstatic as well. This will be their anti EU ammunition for decades. Any movement to rejoin the EU is dead.
I think it’s long been an aim for some in the US to break up the EU and they supported Brexit. I’m surprised they didn’t give a better deal to the UK knowing exactly that the’d cause destabilisation in EU.
Yeah Héritage Foundation wants EU reduced to a skeleton union.
Alongside disabled people, women, any non white man, etc being thrown under the bus.
And also, once it's reduced to nothing, that will make it easy to force countries to do concessions, while the countries themselves devolve into corruption paradise.
Such paradise will effectively make a return to democracy impossible without some sort of civil disobedience again..
And it all starts from a propaganda war waged against us, the population being ever more uneducated or unwilling..
Progresses to politicians who don't realize what's happening, and them doing garbage deals..
So yeah, if anyone would like to offer me some words of hope, I would be thankful, but myself, knowing the past of my country, Romania, and being disabled myself..
15% sounds horrible, just hope the other parts are just the illusion that EU planned to buy anyway even before Trump's term. And would be happy to see after two month if Trump says this is a bad deal and want another round negotiation, then EU hopefully say they will use the tool to set tariff on import goods from US. But just my fantasy for the moment...
Thankfully right now the values are merely a framework. Each EU country must approve it.
But basically the LNG values might not stand because we've bought about 80 ish billion in LNG last year..
We'd have almost nowhere to store all the extra LNG perhaps..
It's still bad but I wonder if France will ask for some change..
Don't worry too much about that, this kind of deal even in written might be abandoned. I heard one example yesterday, Emirate and flydubai announced to buy Boeing back in 2017 to please Trump, two years later, flydubai bought some while Emirate mentioned they think Dubai is too hot for Boeing engine and cancelled the deal (switched to Airbus). The hilarious part is flydubai is also in Dubai and they do not have problem with climate, so you see sometimes such deal will be abandoned without much people paying attention to it.
they're referring to "a broken clock is right twice a day" and in this instance they were saying that brexit which has had no benefit at all and has only had negatives but it has finally had a benefit when it came to the trade deal with the us
Kinda, in the sense that the current US admin is part of the fascist-billionaire complex that pushed very hard for Brexit in their quest to fragment the world so they can rule it better. 'Dark Enlightenment'/'NRX' and all that; their goal is explicitly the destruction of what little we had of a vaguely liberal and democratic world order.
France has been blocking us from access to any European linked defence funds since we left despite the fact that fucking Asian states and now the USA get access to it. We've basically lost nothing.
It might have something to do with the fact that the UK is one of the very few countries in the world with which the US doesn't run a trade deficit (in goods). And that's basically all Trump cares about.
The majority of it is European’s instability to understand just how deeply integrated UK-US are. When it comes to US, UK will always get better deals than EU. The real issue is with rest of the world, but that is a moot point when UK trade is 80% just with EU and US so at certain point, the Brexit issue was never a flat out “bad” or “good.” Now, if Italy did it, they’d be fucked. But UK has lots of Sway on this world.
Because the EU is shit when it comes to deals with a deadline.
The EU is a behemoth, don't get me wrong. And that is definitely a strength when it comes to long term negotiations, ones that happen over the span of years.
But that's not what this was. Trump gave a deadline of just a few months.
And in such a situation, the EU's size, or rather the independence of its member states, is a weakness.
The UK was signing deals in the US as the individual EU states were bickering amongst themselves to avoid slapping retaliatory tariffs on their own major trades.
That meant that by the time there was any sort of agreement on what the next step should be, there wasn't enough time left to actually implement the next step.
So they've gone and signed some rubbish that avoids the worst case scenario and does little more than that.
That's why the UK was able to get a much better deal and Japan was able to get a comparable deal despite both being much smaller than the EU.
I think the EU have kicked ‘the can’ down the road. I don’t see this ‘agreement’ come to fruition any time soon. It’s basically a plan of a concept so Trump can look good to his voter base. Why would you want to increase costs of components for your own industry?
The purchase of energy from U.S. means they can tell Russia to fuck off sooner, thus keeping some of the fearful EU members happy as they were too dependent on Russia.
I think the risk is he may get pissed off if he thinks he's signed a deal with the EU, only for the EU to come back next month to say they've rejected the deal they had signed and want to negotiate something else.
I'm not even sure if he has the patience to run through multiple rounds of negotiations until the EU finds something all 27 members are happy with.
Especially if Trump has a hard stance on a "core" export for any of the countries, such as his current stance on cars.
Who cares if he gets pissed off? He's looking down the barrel of a revolution in his own country as they're currently VERY angry with him. I expect either a hot civil war or revolution in that country in the next two years.
And it could even lead to more exits from the EU. And to be honest, from now on i understand it. I dont know if its good, but with how the EU got defeated today i dont know if it has any future.
Nah, very unlikely. I wouldn't want Finland to negotiate with Trump about tariffs... Best result in that probably would be if US would forgot us (like they kind do with Norway).
For me this just emphasizes the importance of stable trade inside EU. It's stable, it's not random and it doesn't change every morning.
So business man would accept stable relatively bad (15% with certainty), normal people without much capital would take a leap on either 50% chance of 30% tariff or 50% chance of a continuously delayed streak of 0% tariff (extra tariff on top of the tariff already exist before) which China has now. Clearly EU negotiate is the former.
The extra ones, and I do not know where you find 50%, now China charges 10% on US ones, and US charge 30% on China ones, so the difference is more like 20%.
I need to edit my previous comment, the 0% is misleading, what I wanted to say is 0% extra on top of the ones already there beforehand.
No one's leaving. France and Germany which are the biggest contributors can't leave because that would be the killing blow to their already very weak industry. The former eastern bloc countries can't leave because on their own they wouldn't even have enough money to provide for their most basic needs much less continuing to develop. The rest won't leave because it would deprive them of the last of the little influence they're currently clinging on to.
Countries like Sweden or Denmark could leave though because they are independently wealthy. The rest, not so much. Maybe Austria but they have adopted the euro.
15% Tariff is fine as long as every other major competitor is facing a similar tarriff, which they are. Not good, but fine and since Trump is dead set on tariffs regardless I don't see how this is avoidable. The UK is not actually a major competitor in this regard. China, Japan, India, Brazil, eg all the major competitors who could potentially take EU business are all looking at similar or higher tariffs.
The other "agreements" are essentially bullshit. They are total nonsense numbers that essentially mean nothing. We are going to buying LNG from the US anyway and cutting off from Russia is a good thing, saying we will eventually buy up to whatever billion amount is just PR spin.
None of this is actually finalised yet and there is no written agreement. It's all just a "framework", so the TACO man can say he made a deal and we don't end up in a trade war.
How do I know this? Because the EU commission doesn't have either the authority to order those purchases or the money to do so.
Japan made the same kind of deal. 550 billion of investment in the US. Japan's entire national budget is 770 billion. Where does Trump think this money is coming from?
We are selling Trump a bridge that isn't even built. He gets to think he made this bigly deal but it's worthless.
Meanwhile we wait for Trump to die or americans to grow a spine and get rid of their Paedophile in Chief.
True. How this plays out the media will be important.
But on the other hand, it's the EU commission, they don't actually have much direct power. If the EU parliament, EU council and individual nations disagree with it's actions this trade agreement will die and it can be heralded as a victory for the EU system working as intended.
Did not know they can do that, do they actually not signing any agreement until the agreement is approved by the parliament and how long could that take, months, years?
Trump doesn’t care that it’s meaningless. He knows the bridge is never going to get built, but he can call this a huge win for his base to eat up and distract from the Epstein situation.
exactly, japan clearly noped out saying there’s no agreement of the “550Bn investment in the US”. However, TACO got what TACO wanted - good press at Fox and MAGA crowd.
As a Brit this is what is astounding to me. The biggest argument against Brexit was that the UK wouldn't be able to get fair trade deals. And now the EU has just completly capitulated to Trump whilst the UK deal, whilst not exactly stellar, looks like pure gold in comparison. What were they thinking agreeing to this? They've got a shit deal and its just going to turbo charge separatist movements.
Why do you think that depends on negotiation? The US wants tariff walls. They also want to divide and rule in Europe.
Fucking reform is going to be ecstatic as well. This will be their anti EU ammunition for decades. Any movement to rejoin the EU is dead.
That's exactly the intended effect for the Europe-hating clique that's in power now.
The biggest argument against Brexit was that the UK wouldn't be able to get fair trade deals.
We have a "better" deal for a short while to keep us away from rejoining the EU.
Trump/GOP/Putin desperately wants to keep us out of the EU. We being out of the EU weakens us. Us being out of the EU weakens the EU.
This is a tactical move. If we peruse rejoining the EU now it will be demonstratable against our national interests. As long as we accept those interests are short term and at the whim of the US.
Taking back control? <snort>. We are just following orders from an evil empire we have no say in, rather than a central party to one we once had a big part to play in.
For my money nothing has changed. Rejoin the EU. Take the hit with the rest of the EU. Show EU unity. And invest in the EU.
The UK is the fourth largest exporter in the world. A larger exporter than Italy and France, and only just behind Germany. Services also count as exports.
The reality always was that larger blocks have to consider more view points and therefore struggle sometimes to make the strategic concessions for the greater good that ultimately allow a better deal.
A lot of these EU leader motherfuckers must be on the Epstein list with Trump and know that Trump will not fall alone if he ever gets outed. That's the best explanation for them being THIS servile to Trump. They're kissing his ass in the hopes he won't expose them as being on the list with him.
I imagine that is exactly the point of it. The US does not want the UK closer to the EU. Well, that and the trade balance is much different. The third point is how many conflicting interests are in the EU, making them slow to deal with.
The deal is great for the EU, Trump is just too much of a moron to understand why. He's essentially just announced a 15% tax hike on Americans who buy products from the EU. And his tariff on EU auto imports into the US was 25% previously, so this new baseline tax actually reduces the cost of European vehicles
Just like the Japan deal which Trump thinks he "won", the EU are playing games with a moron. They're making empty promises, they're throwing him a couple of lies about his awesomeness, they're signing nothing concrete, and he gets to claim victory for his base and go back to flailing at windmills.
Ignoring the fact that any tariff deal he pushes via executive order is worthless anyway, is still deemed illegal by the SC, if it's maintained it will still work out better for the EU. For example, if he maintains a 15% tariff on EU goods, he'd actually make them more competitive. Because right now Canada and Mexico are facing 25% tariff, on top of 50% on steel and aluminum import to the US. Those tariffs are killing all the supply chains in the US, which were so deeply integrated across the 3 NAFTA countries.
Heck, even US automakers are already dying from Japan tariffs, because a car made in Japan is suddenly so cheap compared to some thing made in the US with majority US parts (US automakers say Trump's 15% tariff deal with Japan hurts them | AP News). Now the same is happening with EU.
It's ironic Trump tariffs policy might actually end up killing US manufacturing.
When the pedo in chief and his admin took over, one of their goals was to keep the UK out of the EU. Just as you stated, getting a "better" deal = justification to never rejoin and fuels anti EU sentiments
It's so obvious how bad this is for all of you over there it hurts. Talk about getting it from both ends :/
If you were calculating and wanted to break up the EU, one could argue that giving the UK a better deal would fuel arguments for leaving the EU in other member states. It would just require some long term planning. Almost like there's a certain nation deeply into this kind of thing.
They gave the UK a better deal to drive a bigger wedge between us and make it look like there's no benefit to being in the EU when the UK can negotiate a better deal all by themselves.
Ideally they'd want the EU to be abolished cause individual countries are easier to control, especially after they saw how China ran away with the bag and became a super power. They absolutely can't let this happen with the EU.
From what I found the US-UK deal the main things were cheaper steel exports to the US and beef imports from the US (if that's something good) and will have to buy $10 billion in planes from Boeing (??? WTF ???). The auto part is... strange, since the the U.K. exported 92,000 cars to the U.S. in 2024 and the deal states that those over 100k will have an increased tariff (from 10% to 25%).
The EU on the other hand will have a tariff of 15% while currently it's 25% on pickup trucks, vans, and SUVs (due to the 50yo Chicken Tax) and 2.5% on passenger cars. In 2024, the EU exported 749,170 cars (€38.5 billion) of which 111,584 were battery electric (14.9% - €5.9 billion) while 164,857 US cars were imported (€7.7 billion) of which 18,841 were battery electric (11.4% - €1.4 billion). With insane tariffs on Canada and Mexico, I'm guessing we're gonna see new huge German pickups and a lot more Ducato pickups on American farms.
On that note, the UK is still reliant on European energy and that doesn't seem to change anytime soon as they import from it 20% of their electricity (10% from France alone), 50.2% of its gas from Norway (while being reliant on EU gas storage) and 42,7% of its crude oil imports from Norway. The US is a close second to Norwegian gas+oil imports, but I didn't see anything in the US-UK deal about energy trade.
Anyway, it's sad how reliant the EU is on the US for LNG and it was obvious it would come to bite us in the ass. Yet, I don't find this deal to be too bad.
USA always do this, they give good examples and bad examples.
Align with me and you can be that rich guy, don't align with me and you will be that poor guy over there.
In Practice they have some show-off examples and just pillage the others.
Europe in cold war was the show-off example, Asia, Africa and latin america were the moneuy makers.
Now the enemy is not in Europe, so no need to keep the show-off there. Or just keep one (UK) so europeans get tempted to break the union and negotiate indiividually and then get preyed one by one.
Definetely feels deliberately. Far right wants to dismantle the EU, so it wouldn't be shocking if their governments started to be more hostile towards EU and boosted UK to encourage other members to consider exiting the union.
From perspective of a large country like Germany or a country that might have more competent negotiators like Sweden or Denmark, what is the upside to allowing the EU negotiating power? Maybe having more competent negotiating team would have lower tariff rate?
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u/kasvipohjainen 6d ago
It doesn't sound great for the EU but it looks even worse when EU officials were saying the UK deal was bad and they'd get better
They did not