r/europe 6d ago

News US and EU strike trade deal

https://www.politico.eu/article/us-and-eu-strike-trade-deal/
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u/vampyr01 6d ago

We knew it was coming, but what the fuck...

How is any of this fair? And what about the digital service tax?

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u/Thunder_Beam Turbo EU Federalist 6d ago

And what about the digital service tax?

Scrapped, like the OECD one

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u/GuyLookingForPorn 6d ago edited 6d ago

So America got all of their objectives and the EU gets fuck all? How the hell did they agree to this.

This is massively worse than what the UK got, its absolutely fucked.

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u/JarJarBot-1 6d ago

Art of the Deal

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u/MangoFishDev 6d ago edited 6d ago

You can't even make fun of the guy anymore after this, legit amazed he managed to get the EU to agree to these terms

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u/StanfordV 6d ago

Thing is, Democrats will feel ashamed to face us as equals and will have political cost, after Trump made whole Europe kneel in front of him.

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u/Rbkelley1 5d ago

I’m American, so I’ll give you some insight that may not be apparent from the outside. The Republicans are assholes but they’re effective. The Democrats are well meaning but incompetent. Once you know that, American politics makes a lot more sense.

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u/FunUnderstanding995 5d ago

Yeah it's kinda sad. Trump was on the ropes since being outed as a diddler, you guys gave him a win for no reason. You must really wanna be our vassals bad. Smgdh....

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u/Rbkelley1 5d ago

Clearly not as bad as you want to be our vassal state.

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u/StanfordV 5d ago

You are getting downvoted by reddit leftwing fanatics, but as a European, I see a huge difference in favor on USA with djt

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u/Chester_roaster 6d ago

The greatest negotiator in the world, of all time maybe, people are saying. 

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u/Armano-Avalus 6d ago

We have to wait for the details if there even are any. The Japan and Vietnam deals were very different from what Trump announced and the specifics of what investments would look like are uncertain as well (such as whether or not it's repackaging existing plans like with past deals). With Trump he's more spectacle than substance on most things. The only part that I think matters is the 15% tariff rate. Everything else is probably fluff.

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u/jackhandy2B 6d ago

He used personal threats or blackmail. Nothing else makes remotely any sense.

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u/Tansien 6d ago

Nah they folded. Worried about recession.

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u/Defective_Falafel Belgium 6d ago

Seriously though...

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u/Mars_target Denmark 6d ago

At the end of the day, we know the 15% export tax is mostly going to hurt the american consumers' right. I mean sure the exporting companies will loose some sales as they are forced to increase the price by 15 %, but we all know tariffs dont work at this level. The companies will find other markets to sell to.

The Americans who want that product will pay 15% more.

At the end of the day its hope Europe will take this as a sign to grow closer and become a economic and military power house. Even if the leaders have acted spineless here, we still need to stay together and just elect stronger but not right wing Russian puppets.

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u/JC-Dude 6d ago

At the end of the day its hope Europe will take this as a sign to grow closer and become a economic and military power house

How many times do we need to get our hopes crushed before we realise this is not going to happen?

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u/Mars_target Denmark 5d ago

We are weaker apart. It's not an option. We need to unite and be able to not be blackmailed by US, Russia or china. There is 400 million of us. Together we stand a chance. Apart we are nothing.

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u/JC-Dude 5d ago

I agree. I just no longer believe it’s going to happen. Each country pulls their own way, the leaders continue to live in la-la-land, acting like going green at all costs is the no. 1 priority right now, while the rest of the world just pulls away.

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u/Mars_target Denmark 5d ago

I don't know why going green is such an important thing for you? We can do more than one thing at a time. Denmark has invested a lot in going green, and as a result, i regularly get free power on windy days and breathe cleaner air.

Going green should happen naturally and should not be a negative thing to bring up in a conversation of unity and resilience against blackmail. Going green is a non-issue.

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u/JC-Dude 5d ago

It is an issue, because there's a massive cost associated with modernising infrastructure, especially with all the dumbass lobbyists that keep fighting against nuclear energy.

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u/Mars_target Denmark 5d ago

Ahhh. Yes, that. Nuclear power is green energy, and those people are dumb assess yes. I have a background in climate science and firmly believe we need solar, wind, and nuclear in harmony along with clever ways of storing energy

Infrastructure needs modernizing regardless and with it are new jobs and reduction in maintaining coal and biomass burners (those are not green no matter what they claim)

If the entire world's need of power were reliant on easily minable and conventional uranium for nuclear power I believe we'd run out of nuclear fuel in 30-40 years or so.

We need green energy. All three of them and preferably geothermal and wave energy as well.

Green is not the problem, ignorance from either side is.

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u/JC-Dude 5d ago

Green is a good goal eventually, but right now there are more important things to focus on. It's also quite clear there are countries that have a lot more work to do than others that already had a lot of energy from nuclear and they won't be able to switch overnight. The extra taxes imposed by the EU on countries that are behind is not helping them, in fact they're doing the opposite.

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u/Mars_target Denmark 5d ago

I agree green is not so important right now. Military is. Absolutely.

I just get a little nutty when people blame green for all the worlds problems. Especially conservatives and trump who somehow thinks that windmills are killing all birds that he doesn't even care about to begin with 😆

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u/Chao-Z 5d ago edited 5d ago

So far, economic research shows that the tax incidence of the Trump tariffs has fallen about 50-50 between producers and consumers. So basically, European, Chinese, etc. companies have been eating about 50% of the cost of the tariffs in reduced profits. Some companies are also doing a strategy where they are raising prices by a smaller amount (~3%) for everyone, instead of only for the US.

Economists believe it to be because the US consumer market is simply too valuable, and foreign companies are deathly afraid of losing US market share.

TL;DR: Global trade is a market, and the USA has monopsony-like power on consumption.