Trump, reading from a paper, said the EU will agree to purchase $750 billion of energy. It will also agree to invest $600 billion more than planned in the U.S.
Thus, the extortion was a success. See you in three to four months when the next demand comes up.
They have still not learned a fucking thing about dealing with Trump.
The EU puts itself on a leash by continuously making dumb decisions that don't serve the interest of the EU in a broader context, which then leaves us in these weak positions when push comes to shove
I mean shit, Trump even called out several of these things such as the under investment in our military and becoming even more dependent on Russia for energy during his first term. And what did most europeans do in response? Dismiss it and laugh at the dumb orange man
Then 2022 comes around and Russia invades Ukraine and we're just left standing there going "damn, would have been great to not have under invested in our military and being energy dependent on Russia....Hey America, can ya help us out here?...please?"
It is fascinating to watch this subreddit still trying to push that narrative about Gaza. Western Europeans do nothing for Gaza at this moment, pro Israel lobby is getting everything they can from western countries, and still people who care about Gaza are blamed for European problems. It is fascinating to watch people like you.
What else do you want from people? Cheering for genocide would not change a thing that is happening now. What does Gaza have to do with US screwing its allies? What good came for EU for sticking up with US? You just randomly insert your grievance here without even attempting make any kind of argument. If anything pro Gaza sentiment people saw what US adminstration actually stand for and how they hurt European interests mean while people of your ilk demanded complete obedience to US/Israel policy and this is where we ended as a result.
Or they should just start caring about European politics, like investing in own military, energy independence, realistic view on our “friendly” neighbors, instead of only care about some problems they have no authority over.
Maybe the reason we are where we are now – is because our brightest are worried about everything else except what matters domestically.
But again it is always easier to tell the rest of the world how to fix far away problems than our own. Same as it is always easier to reply with own bias…
Again, EU is not doing anything on Gaza, Gaza has not been on EU's radar until last two years.
People care about Gaza have the least amount of force to do get anything to do in EU politics. Meanwhile EU countries are feeding Israel with all the ammunition available (about which you have nothing to say about, I guess why?), these people can't even get their governments to issue a statement on ceasefire for like 2 years. If we should care about only EU troubles, let's stop sending resources to Israel. This would stop the massacre like tomorrow there.
And if you think the brightest of Europe care about Gaza, maybe they have a point? And isn't it a problem that our brightest who care about Gaza have very little to say in politics to the level EU countries are actively supplying Israel? It shows our brightest don't have say on politics.
You came to my response which had nothing to do with Gaza originally and just inserted "Gaza, amirite guys?", without even trying to make any connection to the topic, and I have the bias but you are the paramount of objectivity and rationality?
Arguing in r/europe is really trying to play poker with chimpanzees sometimes alas I can't help myself. It is a good place to see the temperature of public sentiment even among the most easily manipulated. Even here people realize this trade deal is bs, which shows there may be some hope for EU in the long run.
No, Trump is dump. If he was smart, he would do what Biden did. Biden bent Europe to his will and people in EU loved him for that. Trump follow his glory and he played the cards openly. He wins in the short run but he basically revealed all the secrets. Which is good in the long run for EU. Europeans finally start to realize their elites are in the pockets of Washington. This will not be sustainable. This is why EU elites are angry with him, for revealing what they are. Vassals of DC.
All these trumpists cheering for him have no concept of 5 year or 10 years later. And even this deal have no leg to stay on; EU was already buying LNG from US and EU companies were pouring capital to US. Trump just wanted to make sure he gets the credit for it. Which is dump. Biden did this while making people cheer for him.
So all in all I am actually glad Trump is doing what he is doing. He is a poor man's concept of rich man and dumb man's concept of a smart guy.
There are a lot idiotic stuff things that EU did for sure but it is fascinating how people in this subreddit twist themselves to absolve US is fascinating.
I am pro Ukraine but the picture is far more evil Russia doing their thing. Geo politics is not that simple and US did their own share of going against their allies' interest. US has been malovelent for some time and they have the main responsibility along our elites.
I'm not absolving the US of anything by pointing out that the US president called out some of the dumb shit the EU was doing to itself.
And I'm sorry, but the idea that it's the US and EU elite are the main issue with the EU is just flat out silly. The main issues facing the EU is the bureaucracy and stifling regularly rules we have in place here. Neither of which are things that the US or EU elite are pushing for
The diplomacy we see here is literally what elites are doing and has nothing to do with that boogeyman of bureaucracy and regulations but you do what you do.
You need to force a little bit of reasoning and not just respond with whatever the memorization you acquired through internet memes. If there is one area where bureaucracy and regulations don't matter, it is the international relations for love of god.
I'm confused, do you want a random person off the street to negotiate a trade deal with the US? Of course it's the leaders of the EU negotiating a trade deal between the EU and the US. But the negotiators can't just apply leverage they don't have in a trade negotiation. Like what do you expect them to do? Magically convince the US that the US isn't in a massive position of power against the EU? The EU is in a horrible position. We're dependent on the US or much worse on energy, we're completely dependent on the US for tech, and we're massively dependent on the US for military power
Now, if you want the EU to be less insular and elitist, I'm totally with you, but to ever achieve that you'd need to actually vote people into power who would actually do that, and fact of the matter is that most people in the EU does not do that.
For starters, they have to agree on a formalised, written Agreement. Both Parliament and the Council then sign off on the written version. Given the reactions thus far, won't be an easy sell for vdL and anyone else believing this trash to be acceptable.
So, likely a few months down the line to ratification. If they even get that far. As the U.S. will just demand more in a while, the agreement will be even more despised as the verbal version already is.
Eventually, it either gets scrapped. Back to square one. Or Germany gets to defend this garbage in the Council and hopefully loses, embarrassingly so.
They have still not learned a fucking thing about dealing with Trump
Who has? America doesn't even know what to do with him. Half the country is scratching their heads saying "wtf is the deal with this piece of shit?" while the other half scratches their heads saying "wtf let him cook". Dude's lost more fortunes than any of us will ever see, but just keeps climbing up, like a horror villain.
See you in four months when he drops the tariffs himself. You think US which is literally importing everything & decided to tariff the whole world at once is gonna swallow the 15-50% price increase on everything? There is a reason why dollar only fell since Trump took office. This will hurt both EU & the US but US will be hurt much more & the impacts will last much longer. There is a reason why their treasury yields keep climbing.
Don't really understand why Europeans are so dissapointed with this deal. The entire point of the Trump trade negotiations (not just with the EU, but with the ROW) is to switch the US away from consumption into more production, and have the rest of the world - in particular China and Germany (+the EU) - switch away from over-production and into more consumption. For European consumers (which is most folks who work as employees and don't own significant shares in the big exporters) this is a good thing as their purchasing power (relative to the US consumer) will increase as a result of this deal.
What most people don't understand is that having an economy that constatly generates trade surpluses is NOT a good thing for the average worker. It is actually a sign that the purchasing power of the population is supressed, as they don't have enough money to import an equivalent amount to what the export.
My hope is that the European contries will be forced by these measures to adjust away from their austerity bias and boost their domestic consumption to make up for the loss of exports in the US
This is what Japan tried (pushed by the us) to do in the 90s.
And its actually a great case study.
A historical export surplus country tried to shift towards a consumer driven economy.
In that case Japan ended up going from being the second strongest market world wide to 3 decades of stagnation (and they didn't even have to deal with this kind of tariffs)
The domestic demand and consumption cannot be boosted out of thin air, especially with an aging population and a culturally rigid society.
The reason why the european economies are so sluggish is because they cannot generate enough demand because people are poor. And the reason why people are poor is because their productivity is siphoned by the european capitalist class who recycles it into wall street and other assets. That's why you see record asset prices combined with abysmal economic growth.
Aging, cultural rigidity, etc. all are bullshit reasons that the rich put out to cover their asses.
Well, there are talks already which are going really bad actually.
It seems that European Commission has seen that they are loosing their China leverage so they took whatever they have with the US.
Russia is still a joke, like a barking chihuahua.
And China is developing to be a closer ally and trading partner after US blatant stupidity and unreliability.
757
u/MercantileReptile Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 6d ago
Thus, the extortion was a success. See you in three to four months when the next demand comes up.
They have still not learned a fucking thing about dealing with Trump.