| ▲ | somenameforme 9 days ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Your entire argument hinges on the claim that Europe is choosing to do these things which I think can be plainly falsified by looking at what they're agreeing to. Here are the notes [1] on the recent trade "agreement" with the US. ------ US gets: - EU investment of $600 billion in the US, invested at Trump's sole discretion - guaranteed sales of $750 billion in US energy resources at a nice fat premium - guarantee sales of an unstated other than "significant" amount of US military equipment - elimination of all EU tariffs in many sectors, including on all US industrial goods EU gets: - Pay new and increased tariffs to the US, ranging from 15-50%. ------ Claiming anybody is choosing this is simply unbelievable. [1] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-th... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | WJW 9 days ago | parent [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Picking a White House publication is going to give you the rosiest picture imaginable. Let's pick some claims apart a little bit to see how it might not be as rosy as you seem to imagine: - The mentioned EU investment is not at the discretion of Trump. Not even the White House statement says that. In addition, for one party to invest the other has to be selling. It's not a gift. The EU buying factories etc in the US (and shipping the profits back home) is hardly being dominated. Neither is it guaranteed: there are hundreds of ways to delay or cancel such investments. In most US places, just encouraging the local NIMBYs will be enough. - Energy imports from the USA over the last 2 years already stood at ~30 billion per month. The 750 billion is over the remaining term of Trump, so very roughly 3.5 more years. That means the EU committed to spend ~215 billion per year, which is actually less than it has been spending on average anyway over the past two years. No premium was agreed in regards to energy prices. Don't know where you get that from, the linked publication does not mention anything like that. - As stated before there are plenty of things we'd actually want to buy from the US, such as weapons for which we're still building our own factories. The Patriot missile factory under construction in Germany is one such example. While it is not yet done, we want to buy missiles to send to Ukraine. So this is a "concession" to do what we were already going to do. Also note that almost any amount can be construed as "significant" if you're a politician. - The EU commits to "work to address a range of U.S. concerns" regarding tariffs. Quoting from that White House publication, we'll even provide "meaningful quotas". What does that mean? Which timescale? How high will the quotas be? Does "supporting high-quality American jobs" mean 5 jobs or millions of jobs? This is just a thing negotiators stuck in there so both parties could claim victory. Finally tariffs are a big nothing burger when it comes to this discussion. It clearly has nothing to do with the EU being a US vassal because every country in the world is being tariffed, up to and including those poor penguins in the pacific. Unless you claim that China and Russia are also not sovereign countries? They have tariffs too. The phrasing of "Pay new and increased tariffs to the US" is also incomplete. The importer of the goods pays the tariffs, and most big companies have already indicated they will raise prices in the US to compensate. In effect US consumers will simply be paying an extra tax to their own government for the privilege of buying goods produced abroad. In short, the EU negotiators got some of the lowest tariffs in the world in exchange for things they were already doing, were going to do anyway, or will not have to do. The negotiators did a rather splendid job I'd say. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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