> However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling

Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.

What has happened the past ±30 years is that most EU countries cut spending on their militaries to the bone, because big brother USA would take care of it anyway. Now that we are returning to a multi-polar world, suddenly the EU is left scrambling for hard power that it doesn't have. That's why they can't play hardball when the US does a new ridiculous thing, because they simply lack the hard power to back up Ukraine.

The US is sorely going to regret their antics though. Long term, the EU is going to switch to their own stacks, both for military but also things like cloud and other tech. It's trillions of $ the US economy will be missing out on. And voting in a Democratic president, senate and house is not gonna change a thing about it, because the US has proven itself to be a fundamentally unreliable, if not outright hostile partner.

The US alone spends 1.5x as much on consumer goods (yes, adjusted for PPP) and nearly 2x as much on R&D as the entire EU. It’s very sweet that the EU is trying to decouple itself from the US economy, but I highly doubt its ability to become “leader of the free trade world” when it has so little money to throw around.

>whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.

Source? Also free trade isn't always a benefit for your own citizens and companies. Do you want to import low quality agriculture made by slave labor that will undercut your own farmers? There's a reason borders and goods have some restrictions.

The recent free trade agreements the EU has been signing are just short term gain for long term pain down the road, since everyone has the EU by the balls right now so they're squeezing as much as they can from them now while they're busy with Russia and expensive energy.

It's not gonna create a superpower like dreamers think, it's gonna create new dependencies with other countrie, which is gonna backfire like their dependency to US tech and Russian gas did, while the core issues plaguing the EU(demographics, debt, government speeding on welfare, lack of innovation and manufacturing in key sectors, no funding) will remain and continue to grow. Signing deals to import more people and cheap stuff from India or wherever to depress wages and prices, doesn't fix any of that.

"the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin"

At its usual pace ... do you know when the negotiations with Mercosur started? Year 2000. Only now we have an agreement. Still, better than not doing anything at all. But I wonder how many of the original negotiators are still alive.

It also yet remains to be seen what happens if China puts a real pressure on us. Our list of allies is now somewhat thin and we have to cozy up to India, which indirectly funds the Russian war against Ukraine by importing Russian weapons and Russian oil/gas, the latter in huge quantities. Still, better than cozying up to China, because the possibility that Beijing teaches Brussels some cool tricks to keep the population under perfect surveillance scares me.

It is difficult to think of an economic region that is more opposed to free trade than Europe (that isn't a comedy country). Possibly some countries in South America?

Trade within Europe has massive restrictions. I have no idea why, given the stated aims of Europe...we are posting this on a post about the Netherlands trying to protect office software ffs, people think this isn't the case. One of the reasons why the EU created a trade bloc, and the same reasons why you see the same attempts in areas of the world like South America, was to limit the impact of free trade. This should be completely obvious given that the EU is not competitive in areas where they lack the ability to limit competition.

Also, I will point out: US policy is for the EU to do exactly the thing that you are suggesting. This has been the consistent position of Trump since 2016. The main blockers for this have been politicians in the EU. I am not sure how you equate being unreliable with subsidising EU defence spending to the tune of multiple trillions so that EU countries can spend on welfare either.

The EU self-image is totally bizarre, it is so out of touch with reality. Hostile to all forms of change and innovation: actually one of the greatest free traders there has ever been. Xenophobic and hostile to certain countries: possibly one of the greatest allies to these countries ever. Never gets any support on Ukraine, would be a leader if the US weren't such bastards: spent multiple decades fuelling Putin's state.