[mdemare]

Whatever the economic merits and demerits of this deal, politically it's a disaster, as this article indicates. There wasn't even an attempt to sell this to the public. But as there are no elections until 2028, I expect major changes in strategy in a year or so, otherwise the center-right parties in charge now will be wiped out in favor of the anti-American factions of the far right and far left.

My suspicion is that there's a quid-pro-quo regarding Ukraine. Economically, the EU is in a strong position, but militarily, a mercurial US has the EU over the barrel due to the Ukraine war.

I predict that Europe's notoriously hard-nosed negotiators (Brexit) will ramp up the pressure as the midterms get closer and if the situation in Ukraine improves.

[silvestrov]

I think many Americans don't understand that the war in Ukraine is not a hobby for Europe like the Vietnam/Korea/Afghanistan/Iraq war were for the US.

European security depends on winning the Ukraine war.

Anders Puck Nielsen explains it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxapAZRYJ6I

This is why it makes sense to eat the tariffs as long as it keeps the weapons flowing from the US and why EU doesn't mind much paying for them.

[sunshine-o]

> European security depends on winning the Ukraine war.

This is absurd.

Before 2021 and people were told to "care" about it, Ukraine was a "Westworld" type place for Europeans and others.

If European security depends on Ukraine, why didn't Europe sent any troops there?

This is very new, we fight an existential war now without sending any troops, money should be enough.

Anyway the fact is almost 4 years in Ukraine is probably dead demographically. You can't really reboot a country after having so much of its "fighting age" male population dead. Especially because the one who will be left will be deranged, violent and addicted to all sort of things.

And then having this type of nightmare on or within your borders is another pandora box. So now whether the EU declares it wins or looses the war, it has lost anyway.

On the EU internal politics side, we are literally living in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. No need for much explanations.

[simion314]

My guess the negotiators had somehow the information that the tariffs will soon be declared illegal so would be smart to let the narcisist think he won, I hope I am right and there is still rule of law in USA.

[stubish]

The negotiators agreed to demands under threat of tariffs that they believed would soon disappear? That makes no sense.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Economically, the EU is in a strong position

Compared to who/what/when? The US? China? Not a chance. Economically, the EU is as weak now as it ever was.

About 2 decades ago, EU had the same GDP as the US, or even slightly more. Now it's at half of the US and stagnating or even shrinking due to a series of issues it has no solution to, since a lot of it's economy hasn't recovered much post-2008 crash. The EU knows the economic deck is not staked in its favor so it has to bend over to the US now. 2 decades ago the EU would have been able to fend of such actions from a hostile US administration and even more so fron China. But it can't today because it's twice as weak and the US and China are much stronger.

And it's actually very easy to understand why we're here in this situation. If you look at the government budgets in most EU countries today, about a third everywhere is going to welfare and retirement spending with retirement spending dwarfing absolutely everything else in the country by far, with some pensions being higher than some full time wages, which is absurd IMHO. Now, caring for the people and the elderly is noble and all, but you can't win any competition against nations that take that third of GDP that you spend on retirees and they spend it on on economic and military development instead. You just can't win like this, straight up, the math doesn't math. Eventually over the long run, they'll economically or militarily conquer you. So you'll have to choose between spending on providing a cushy lifestyle for retirees, or ensuring a prosperous future for your country.

EU fell asleep at the wheel for over two decades and woke up today that it needs to start the fire again, but it has no money to do so because it's in a economic downturn, an energy crisis, a demographic crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, political extremism crisis left and right, and war next door needing to fight all these fires at once. Very bad timing for EU, and China, Putin and Trump know this and are taking full advantage of "buying the dip" now in Europe the same way European powers were "buying the dip" in their (former) colonies in Africa and across the world. All, and I really mean ALL countries, engage in economic imperialism every chance they get, and Europe somehow forgot its own lesson thinking they are somehow untouchable.

[mdemare]

The EU economy is $20T vs USA $30T, so 60%. Also, Britain was part of the EU 2 decades ago. The EU economy has almost doubled in that time, with large regional differences (Ireland, Poland on fire, southern Europe flat), but the USA has done better than the eu average.

[surgical_fire]

It's important to mention that key points of this deal still needs to go through the European Parliament.

It's unlikely to go through as even parties that support VDL are against this deal: https://www.politico.eu/article/european-socialists-come-out...

[thrance]

Is there such a thing as the "anti American far right"? As far as I can tell, all these wannabe despots are buddy-buddy with Trump, Musk and MAGA in general.

[mdemare]

Not sure if this is generally known, but historically, going back as far as the second world war, the European far-right has been quite anti-American.

[axus]

No True American

[asimovfan]

no. there isn't. there is also no anti-america far left. especially not in the context of any future negotiations with the US.

[jacekm]

I wouldn't mind "security in exchange for better economic treatment" deal, but I don't understand how anybody still trusts US in terms of security. They clearly showed that they fear Russia, plus Trump made several allegations that they may not provide military help even to NATO allies. I am from Poland, theoretically we have US troops stationed here but over 70% of population (including myself) don't believe they will stay here long once we're attacked.

US got concrete economic concessions in writing in exchange for words about security.

[AnotherGoodName]

A good example we just saw today. Countries with security arrangements with the USA can be bombed freely by those with more favor with the current US leadership.

[NicoJuicy]

Tbh. I think more that everyone just names a number to make Trump happy and that it's not enforced.

[helqn]

> There wasn't even an attempt to sell this to the public.

EU policy about everything in a nutshell. We are not consulted or taken into account about absolutely anything. What would we even do about it?