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EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

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Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#171

Post by oulipo2 »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #164
oulipo2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, it's quite apparent today that globalization and free borders have largely failed the people, and that some amount of protectionism should be put back in place

No, it is not apparent. Globalization has driven economic growth in a lot of countries, both developing and developed. There’s steady increase in HDI everywhere, decrease in extreme poverty, less hunger, better education etc etc. Nothing of that would be possible in postcolonial protectionist world. What you are talking about as reasonable amount isn’t protectionist, it’s just a sane set of domestic policies (welfare…

We're speaking of the effect ON DEVELOPED COUNTRIES WORKFORCE, it mostly has failed the people, with jobs sent overseas, and lower quality goods, full of pesticides, coming in. All that for what? Just overconsumption that mostly ends in the trash. A new world IS possible

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#172

Post by tpm »

nix-zarathustra wrote: post #170
tpm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from a country with a not so huge agricultural sector (Slovakia) and think that anything that brings food prices down while not hugely affecting quality will be good. Food in the EU is overpriced relative to the rest of the world. There are reasons for that I can understand but still.

What do you mean by "not so huge agricultural sector (Slovakia)"? I thought Slovakia had a more agrarian economy compared to the more industrialised Czechia.

It's only about 2% of GDP, comparable to the Czechs. Fun fact - Slovakia is a global leader in car production per capita, making around 1 million cars last years with 5 million inhabitants.

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#173

Post by surgical_fire »

iagooar wrote: post #129
surgical_fire wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> South American farmers to produce with lower quality and adding forbidden substances to grow crops faster - and cheaper. This is a lot of fearmongering in a small sentences. Nothing in the agreement says that that the EU has ro accept food produced with substandard practices. Also, food produce in South America is not exactly low standards.

On average, South American farmers use 2-3 times more pesticides than farmers in Europe. 2-3 times more would be illegal in Europe, but is allowed as part of Mercosur trade. Pesticides banned in Europe, but allowed in South America: Atrazine, Acephate, Mancozeb, Paraquat, and many more. Diseases they can produce include: Parkinson's, brain damage in children and lower IQ, infertility, genetic mutations.

This is the fearmongering I am talking about.

Nothing in the deal says that EU has to accept anything that does not adhere to EU standards. Any food imports have to follow EU regulations. It only allows (a fairly dismal quota) to go through without tariffs.

So all the bullshit you just said (which I am not even sure I trust) is irrelevant.

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#174

Post by spwa4 »

Saline9515 wrote: post #167
gus_massa wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already a lot of special cases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_Quota Local producers follow the rules, dot theit i and cross their t, because it's more profitable to sell the premium parts of the cow to Europe and the rest in the local market. There are controls here and also when it arrives to Europe.

Most of the cheaper honey you can buy in the EU is imported from China, and is fake, made from glucose syrup. The EU has tried to "regulate", but chinese producers don't care, no one except consumer groups and beekeeper unions pay for tests. Maybe in ten years, when most EU beekeepers will have thrown the towel and moved to other occupations, the EU will act and forbid imports. But until then, well eat overpriced glu…

Yep that is more and more the problem. Regulations are made "for show". Governments don't check them, don't enforce them (except extremely selectively), and companies are learning to just ignore them. But it's not just a problem for imports.

(note that the EU has already perfected this, as it is now basically standard for EU legislation to have rules about enforcement that always boil down to only allowing the EU commission to enforce legislation, or not enforce it. In other words: you, and even local governments, cannot use the courts to get compliance)

1) activists and lobbyists get what they want ... or they think so

2) governments get the votes they need without destroying the economy because political parties can lie about their "achievements"

3) companies (farms, what remains of industry) get what they want

Of course this will lead to a total disaster, sooner or later. Probably sooner. One where millions of lives will be very negatively affected.

Free trade is making this worse. Of course, China has always done this. In China, the law doesn't matter, only what the party says at the moment does. And even that is assuming there is zero truth to the constant claims that China encourages fake medicine production and even drug production for export.

In the US, this is now more and more the case as well. For example, xAI simply totally violated environmental laws (among others [1]) to get their datacenter operational and operating at all. Which, of course, really pushes their competition to do the same. The punishment? "Never do it again". Of course, it is essentially inconceivable that they're complying with the ruling (the datacenter is currently running and has not received extra grid power. In other words: the illegal generators are running right now despite the ruling, not only that but the second datacenter also has at least 45 illegal generators)

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#175

Post by embedding-shape »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #139
embedding-shape wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's already pretty cheap, how much cheaper can it get? Usually you'd pay somewhere around 1-1.2 EUR for an espresso, 1.5-2.0 EUR for "fancier" coffees, at least here in Spain (depends a lot on exactly where though).

Since covid coffee has doubled in price.

But where? Certainly not here.

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#176

Post by mantas »

toyg wrote: post #97
mantas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping food across the globe works great along with green deal. Such food quality is also questionable in many ways because transportability must be #1 priority. As another commenter pointed out, beef is especially interesting. On one hand EU cries about greenhouse gas and how we should eat less meat. On the other hand goes to reduce price and increase production of beef which such moves. Pure hypocrisy. I wonder i…

If anything, deepening economic relationships will strengthen European influence over complex issues. As for transport - enough of this stuff is already transported across the ocean (from LATAM but also South Africa, for example) that I doubt there will be much of a change.

Yeah, right. We currently see how that worked out with Russia. It turns out EU had little influence, but influence the other way was much stronger.

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#177

Post by port11 »

tpm wrote: post #162
NoboruWataya wrote: post #100

I am from a country (Ireland) that has a huge agricultural sector so I sympathise with the argument that this will be bad for European farmers. That said, food production in the EU is already largely kept alive by subsidies so if this deal makes life more difficult for farmers I can see the result being higher subsidies to compensate rather than the large scale closure of European farms. Which obviously isn't great b…

I am from a country with a not so huge agricultural sector (Slovakia) and think that anything that brings food prices down while not hugely affecting quality will be good. Food in the EU is overpriced relative to the rest of the world. There are reasons for that I can understand but still.

A consistent argument against the deal was precisely that the Mercosur partners won’t be able to stick to the same quality standards that we impose on the Bloc, or they might but then their prices will have to go up to accommodate the added bureaucracy and expectations in terms of agricultural practices.

Another more cynical take is that were simply offloading to poorer countries the greenhouse gas emissions of our agriculture.

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#178

Post by port11 »

geocar wrote: post #110
mikaeluman wrote: post #51

The main issue as I see it is that we need food security in the EU. Especially high quality nutrious dense food like beef. And EU farmers are subject to a ridiculous number of regulations and costs. The thing is, these may very well be good for environmental reasons, but it doesn't work if we just start importing from countries that do the opposite.

> The thing is, these may very well be good for environmental reasons, but it doesn't work if we just start importing from countries that do the opposite. Everything I have read suggests the EU has controls to "temporarily suspend tariff preferences on agricultural imports from Mercosur if these imports harm EU producers" https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-mercosur-agre... and they intend to "uphold EU an…

Well, who are you? As a voter, I’m already disappointed in Belgium’s lack of a gold standard for the welfare of chicken-laying eggs and male chick grinding. So we’re stuck buying the more expensive organic eggs. Okay, so the partners promise to uphold animal welfare standards. How are we checking? How often?

Are their emissions lower than ours? Do they pollute their waterways? What do they feed their livestock? Was it grown using pesticides we’ve banned, but feed was conveniently laundered through a 3rd-party importer?

I think it’s good to strike deals with new partners, but Mercosur was consistently criticised for not addressing corruption, not helping the already suicidal EU farmers, etc. It went full steam ahead, without any regard for the voters and their opinions.

Source? Dunno, I went to the protests and maybe I’m very biased.

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#179

Post by lm28469 »

surgical_fire wrote: post #123
lm28469 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we focus on the shit part of the deal? Do I need to explain that really?

Because that part of the deal is not shitty. You are just fearmongering based on lies. "Hormone raised cattle", and shit like that. South America likely has the best beef in the world (I can speak from experience having lived on both sides of the pond). Good that I might have access to real meat here for once.

> South America likely has the best beef in the world

lol

> Good that I might have access to real meat here for once.

lmao

It's one of the most corrupt part of the world and they 100% definitely use antibiotics and hormones banned in europe for safety reasons

Re: EU and Mercosur countries sign landmark free trade deal

#180

Post by tpm »

port11 wrote: post #177
tpm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from a country with a not so huge agricultural sector (Slovakia) and think that anything that brings food prices down while not hugely affecting quality will be good. Food in the EU is overpriced relative to the rest of the world. There are reasons for that I can understand but still.

A consistent argument against the deal was precisely that the Mercosur partners won’t be able to stick to the same quality standards that we impose on the Bloc, or they might but then their prices will have to go up to accommodate the added bureaucracy and expectations in terms of agricultural practices. Another more cynical take is that were simply offloading to poorer countries the greenhouse gas emissions of our a…

I think quality standards are a bit different from other trade barriers like tariffs and quotas. We in the EU are importing lots of foods from over the world and the quality standards are already in place and checked (or not, in any case we have to police this ourselves), so probably not much will change for e.g. Argentinian beef in that regard.

> but then their prices will have to go up

But again their prices would have to account for this whether they are trading inside the trade bloc or exporting to the EU.

> Another more cynical take is that were simply offloading to poorer countries the greenhouse gas emissions of our agriculture.

But we are doing this already. And if the issue becomes too big to ignore, we already have a solution, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, so let's apply that to agriculture too.

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