EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification • Hacker News Board

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#111

Post by joe_mamba » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 11:44 AM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #107

joe_mamba wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 wa…

>Proportional representation definitely helps here.

With this logic doesn't the US have proportional representation as well? Didn't Trump win the popular vote and republicans the senate? The majority of voters won, end of story, and the ones who lost have another chance in 3 years to flip the board. Where exactly is the missing vent valve you were talking about?

>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

Well yeah that's the big issue, but nobody will win the elections by saying they are slaves of the capital class and doesn't matter who you vote for as they are powerless to change the crooked financial system that actually runs the world even if they win the elections since the finance systems globally connected and easily moves to the areas with most stability and tax benefits even if they are undemocratic.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#112

Post by mrtksn » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 11:46 AM UTC

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.

It's the same with Putin. EU-Russia had a good working relationship where Russia sends oil&gas and EU sends Mercedes and Adidas and live happily. However this is not enough for the megalomaniacs at the top, this is boring they need to be conquerors they need their place in the history books be longer than a chapter.

Maybe going forward there must be safeguards against power accumulation. The checks and balances obviously didn't work, so something more potent is needed.

In Europe it took Putin, Erdogan and the others 20 years to come the place where Trump reached in less than a years, so US needs it much more acutely obviously.

BTW this is not only about protecting the society from their existence but also protect the society from their sudden disappearance. With such concentration of power, the power of the nation often dies with those people. If they survive long enough to transition power peacefully, the best they can do is to leave it to their son and their sons often turns out to inherit the brutalities without the skills.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#113

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 11:51 AM UTC

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…

Look at the right wing parties in Europe. They have a decade or two headstart on the MAGA movement. They are getting real power, but it is also moderated by what their coalition can accept.

We are also seeing for example France and the UK dealing with the same problem as the US due to its lackluster electoral system. Not allowing any vents.

The UK venting became Brexit, and then never went away and is today Reform.

The venting becomes a spectrum. One extreme is the US with large constituencies and first past the post voting. Where any vote made by the heart is discouraged.

A little bit less extreme is Australia. Still single member constituencies but you are encouraged to vote first with your heart, and then with your brain. Leading to representation heavily weighted towards the incumbents but some representation for the issues people truly care about.

Then you have proportional parliamentary systems. Here you decide what level of venting you need based on the percentage requirements to enter the parliament.

In Sweden it is 4% of national vote or 12% of a constituency. Single question parties generally need to broaden their spectrum but will get in if enough people care.

In the Netherlands it is 0.67% and you have a flourishing of parties but problems forming coalitions.

Personally I would say - do local constituencies so geographical areas are represented and pick a percentage which works for you.

Pick 10% and you focus on executive action. Pick 1% and you focus on the town hall of messages. But don't pick something where no vent is possible, like first past the post systems.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#114

Post by Y-bar » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 12:25 PM UTC

thecopy wrote: post #56

littlestymaar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Vance doesn't have the cult of personality

Let's not underestimate the ability of Fox News, Peter Thiel, Turning Point USA, Newsmax, Truth Social, and Elon Musk's Twitter to manufacture a enough of a cult.

Recent example is how they are using Erika Kirk (she appears to play along quite well) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/vance-trump-jrs-plans-bolst...

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#115

Post by atoav » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 12:47 PM UTC

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…

> And here you take the easy way out. Just blame third parties.

(1) I did not say one needs to stop where I stopped and (2) I did not talk about how blame is distributed between those layers. Any view that only the root cause layers can be blamed is too simplistic, since you can always go one layer higher. In reality blame is much more complex and the layers are not clearly separable either, as they can have cyclic dependencies feeding into each other.

So in your example there is a design issue of a political system leading to an outcome, that produces a certain culture which makes it hard to change above mentioned political system. People are a part of that and it is true that if all people just were to know this and stand up for it that would be easily fixable. But in the same moment the people broadly are the way they are because of the systems they grew up in and if that system was different you wouldn't have the problem either.

So who is to blame? Depends on what you're after personally and whst you think an effective strategy for getting there is. I think getting rid of incentives that lead to negative political outcomes is a good thing and effective way to change society. Much more effective than begging people to think a certain way.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#116

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 12:58 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#117

Post by mk89 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #24

inglor_cz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mercosur took 20 years to finalize and if it wasn't for recent unhingedness of American politics, I would expect it to get vetoed by special farmer interests in the last minute. But the threat became too big for that. But yeah, there will be some urgency now. In times of need, people find out that all the "necessary" bureaucracy isn't really that necessary. War or threat of war is the only thing stronger than red tap…

20 years and counting. The Mercosur deal still needs to pass the EU Parliament, and it’s not scheduled to come up for at least a few months. The EU’s Parliament is also nearly split down the middle on the deal which means there’s still about a 50/50 it fails, maybe 51/49 or 52/48 in its favor at the moment, but it is very close and still has about as much chance of passing as not passing at this juncture.

Ooops: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/01/21/european-parli...

:)

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#118

Post by fc417fc802 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

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.

I agree the cause is at least partially structural but I'd argue that congress deadlocking is generally an intentional feature not a bug. Meanwhile the courts on the whole seem quite reasonable to me. Disliking what the rules say should never turn into lambasting the ref for making calls consistent with those rules.

That said, it doesn't seem to me that reform has been meaningfully attempted yet. It isn't reasonable to blame the establishment for blocking a reform that never got organized to begin with.

Presumably if there were concrete proposals with broad popular support intended to fix lobbying, gerrymandering, first past the post, and the information environment in general then we should see them implemented at the state level here and there. But we don't.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#119

Post by fc417fc802 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

joe_mamba wrote: post #111

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wa…

>Proportional representation definitely helps here. With this logic doesn't the US have proportional representation as well? Didn't Trump win the popular vote and republicans the senate? The majority of voters won, end of story, and the ones who lost have another chance in 3 years to flip the board. Where exactly is the missing vent valve you were talking about? >think that a lot of the issues relate to free flows of…

No. The US has a first past the post system that naturally forms two parties which in turn fuels further polarization. A rep runs in a district and it's winner take all. In theory (totally unrealistic in practice) you could have a single party win all the seats by achieving 51% in each individual election. The other 49% of voters (ie approximately half of the country) wouldn't receive a single representative.

Proportional representation has advantages but comes with its own complexities. However there are also other voting systems (such as ranked) that offer different tradeoffs independent of proportional representation. There are a lot of options out there and pretty much all of them would be more functional than what we use in the US.

About the only thing our system has going for it is that someone with an IQ well below 100 can still fully understand and even help audit it. (Or at least that used to be the case before electronic voting machines started appearing.)

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#120

Post by thrance » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #112

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.

It's the same with Putin. EU-Russia had a good working relationship where Russia sends oil&gas and EU sends Mercedes and Adidas and live happily. However this is not enough for the megalomaniacs at the top, this is boring they need to be conquerors they need their place in the history books be longer than a chapter. Maybe going forward there must be safeguards against power accumulation. The checks and balances obvio…

Putin and Trump wouldn't be where they are without their respective oligarchical classes' supports. You can't have democracy when some private individuals are able to hold unto so much wealth and power, buying media and politicians, etc. This is what needs to be addressed if we don't want more Trumps and Putins.