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EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

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Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#101

Post by rsynnott »

tchalla wrote: post #83
orwin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The importer pay the tariff, unless it changed in the last two hundred years?

I believe kindness hasn’t changed in the last 200 years - try it. You are correct that importers pay tariffs on paper but that doesn’t always mean the tariffs are paid by the importers in real terms. Exporters may not want to change prices for competitiveness to local goods so in the end regardless of the actual invoice, the exporter is paying for those tariffs. You can find multiple exporters talking about absorbing…

While there are niches where this can happen, in practice the consumer generally pays. If nothing else, most companies who produce export goods simply do not have the margins to absorb a 15% cost. What boring manufacturing industry has 15% net margins?

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#102

Post by kevin061 »

honzabe wrote: post #84
kevin061 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly has the EU fucked over the US? By enforcing basic consumer protections like making sure airlines can't just unilaterally cancel your flight with no compensation? By making sure your image cannot be used by megacorporations for sex ads without permission? By making sure companies who intentionally or unintentionally leak personal information suffer consequences? By making sure European industry is powered…

My guess would be that the OP subscribes to the MAGA worldview, because in their alternative reality, the US-Europe security arrangement was not a mutually beneficial relationship between allies, but a parasitic relationship where the US pays, and Europe reaps the benefits. Obviously, this worldview is strategically myopic, based on ignoring many things the US was getting out of this arrangement, like US military bas…

Indeed. I am also tired of Trump pretending trade imbalance is real when he is only counting goods and energy, but he does not count the massive influence of American Big Tech and how Europe basically has zero competition against cloud services, operating systems, office suites, mobile phone manufacturers, computer chips... It all comes from USA, or, lately, China.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#103

Post by graemep »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #100
graemep wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vance seems to be very different. For all we know his real views are still these https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/15/jd-vance-donald-tru...

And yet his allegiance is completely up for sale. He will do whatever he is told to do by the likes of Peter Thiel & co.

It looks like it at the moment. I wonder whether it would remain the same if he was president. He would need Thiel less, and not need Trump at all.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#104

Post by honzabe »

pu_pe wrote: post #89

Today at Davos will be a very important inflection point. If Trump decides to maintain or escalate pressure on Europe over Greenland, more economic retaliation will follow. While that could be suicidal for Europe, there are other factors at play, such as the fact that Trump cannot afford a self-inflicted economic collapse during an election year.

Danish military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen argues, IMHO convincingly, that Europe should now escalate to de-escalate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwRsTDlqU8I

As a European myself, I will support politicians with an uncompromising approach, no matter the cost.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#105

Post by joe_mamba »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #88
atoav wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Because you can always go one level higher and ask: Why are the US people the cause? And then we will talk about structural issues, to do with social mobility, education, a dysfunctional journalistic landscape, a tribalization of the political landscape and so on. But of course it doesn't stop there. You can go one up: Why did these underlying causes came to be? The simple answer is that a certain loose c…

> will always boil down to lobbying and money in politics. And here you take the easy way out. Just blame third parties. You should keep asking why to find the real cause. My personal take, as someone who is European but has lived in the US, Texas metro areas specifically, is that first past the post elections sow division. Choices are limited, political activity is neutered, and extremism builds until it finds an ou…

>Political systems needs vents for frustration, and the US system does not have that.

Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks?

Because I see it differently. Trump IS the frustration vent itself but people refuse to acknowledge this and look for something else to blame as if people shouldn't be allowed to use their vote for a crazy candidate as a vent of frustration, and the frustration vent should be a virtually inexistent token piece.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#106

Post by panda-giddiness »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #32
thecopy wrote: post #11

It all seems so surprisingly unnecessary. Angry geriatric man f*cks the world up for generations to come, then in a short bit he will die, and not have to live through the consequences.

Trump is the symptom, not the cause. The cause the US people.

No, the cause is structural. Even if one could identify the sources of rot (money in politics, an outdated electoral college, the collapse of our information environment, whatever), Congress would deadlock, the Courts would block any meaningful reform, and the President would be left trimming the blight while the rot festered underneath.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#107

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #105
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will always boil down to lobbying and money in politics. And here you take the easy way out. Just blame third parties. You should keep asking why to find the real cause. My personal take, as someone who is European but has lived in the US, Texas metro areas specifically, is that first past the post elections sow division. Choices are limited, political activity is neutered, and extremism builds until it finds an ou…

>Political systems needs vents for frustration, and the US system does not have that. Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks? Because I see it differently. Trump IS the frustration vent itself but people refuse to acknowledge this and look for something else to blame as if people shouldn't be allowed to use their vote for a crazy ca…

> Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks?

Proportional representation definitely helps here. You could look at the UK as a good counter-example, where the UKIP (a Brexit supporting party) got like 15% of the votes in the 2015 election, and no seats. Where people see that voting doesn't change anything, they'll look for some other way to effect change.

That being said, PR doesn't really appear to be working that well. I (personally) think that a lot of the issues relate to free flows of capital across the world, which leads businesses to be set up in areas of cheap labour, which makes people in developed countries angry and more likely to vote for anyone who'll promise to fix it (regardless of how insane their ideas are).

But it's complicated, monocausal explanations are typically deceptive.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#108

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #66
smashah wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign and Billionaire demonic interest have disenfranchised the people long ago. Luckily the people have a second-amendment constitutional duty to re-secure the free state. It's clear America is no longer a free state. One cannot be free in a panopticon.

It is time to stop blaming third parties. The truth is that congress is able to rein in Trump any second they want. The reason they don't is that they know that they will get primaried and lose their seat for someone more aligned with the people and Trump.

> they will get primaried

Primaries are kinda insane though. It basically means that a small minority of voters control who actually is allowed to stand for election under a party banner. Like, I understand how it ended up this way, but it's having really bad consequences.

That being said, if you could fix gerrymandering, a lot of the issues with primaries go away, as there would be more competition in the actual election which would dis-incentivise proposing extremist candidates in the primary.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#109

Post by thrance »

littlestymaar wrote: post #19
thecopy wrote: post #11

It all seems so surprisingly unnecessary. Angry geriatric man f*cks the world up for generations to come, then in a short bit he will die, and not have to live through the consequences.

Even if Trump died today, Vance would continue his nefarious job.

Vance has none of whatever Trump used to entrance 50% of Americans. MAGA dies with Trump, although I'm sure something else will come end replace it, if the issues that led to it aren't fixed.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#110

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

panda-giddiness wrote: post #106
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is the symptom, not the cause. The cause the US people.

No, the cause is structural. Even if one could identify the sources of rot (money in politics, an outdated electoral college, the collapse of our information environment, whatever), Congress would deadlock, the Courts would block any meaningful reform, and the President would be left trimming the blight while the rot festered underneath.

Which leads to the people.

The only ones that could cause change needed to reform their representation in the political system is the people. The incumbents have no incentive to do it.

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