THE MORNING RANT – EU Capitulates to Trump’s Tariff Agenda: Why Aren’t Free Traders Touting How Great This Is for Europe?

President Trump’s one-sided trade deal that he just imposed on the European Union has caused a lot of anger and despair on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, was compelled to make trade concessions that come across as near-total capitulation to Trump’s terms. She had no choice. This was necessary so as to not to cost the 27-nation EU a greater loss of access to the enormous American market.

How one-sided is it?

• Tariffs on most products being imported to the US from Europe will increase from about 1% to 15%.
• Tariffs on vehicles being imported to the U.S. will increase from 2.5% to 15%. The short-term impact of this will be more tariff revenue for the U.S., which will be eaten by European manufacturers if they want to sell their cars here. The long-term impact of this will be the movement of European car manufacturing to the US, bringing manufacturing jobs to the US, and costing the EU jobs.
• The 50% tariff that Trump imposed on steel, aluminum, and copper imports will remain in place.
• The EU will roughly double the amount of US energy that it imports, to about $750 billion per year.
• European manufacturers will commit to $600 billion in capital expenditures for industrial development in the US.
• The EU will eliminate tariffs on products exported from the US to Europe.

This is a staggering reversal of the unfair trade practices that existed before – trade practices that helped crush American manufacturing, but were celebrated by “Principled Free Traders” who rejoiced at every American job lost to “free trade.”

Of course, what existed before wasn’t “free trade” at all, it was unilateral surrender to foreign mercantilism. However, the Principled Free Traders repeatedly told us that surrendering to non-reciprocal, one-sided trade was a beautiful thing because:

- American consumers get lower prices! The free traders didn’t even care if the lower-cost of imports was due to price-supports from unfriendly foreign governments.
- Trade that eliminates American manufacturing jobs allows American labor to be better deployed to “thinking” jobs rather than to manual labor.
- Tariffs are a tax on consumers. If the US had imposed counter-tariffs, that would have been a “tax on consumers.”
- A utopian global economy requires an upfront American capitulation to set the example of how other countries should behave in a libertarian world without economic borders.

David Harsanyi articulates the globalist, America-last position in his frequent writings about the beauty of surrendering to non-reciprocal “free trade.” At the Washington Examiner a few months ago he wrote, “Trade isn’t fair. Americans should pray it never gets fair.” He added, “Trade allows average working-class Americans to buy all kinds of things they could not otherwise afford because of trade. Forcing working-class Americans to make things foreigners or machines can make cheaper only undermines the creation of better jobs for them and their children.”

It seems to me that the EU’s capitulation to Trump has put Europe in the position that free traders always advocated for the US. Shouldn’t this trade deal therefore be great news for Europe per free trader logic?

The EU is eliminating tariffs on goods imported from the US. This will relieve citizens in the EU of a “tax on consumers,” right?

With tariffs lifted on goods imported from the US. average working class Europeans will now be able “to buy all kinds of things they could not otherwise afford because of trade,” correct?

Working class Europeans losing their jobs to Americans will allow those displaced workers the opportunity for “the creation of better jobs for them and their children.”

But strangely enough, the same globalist and intellectual class that celebrates American surrender on trade is not celebrating European surrender to the US. Here is a typical headline, this one from The Guardian: “US - EU trade deal is a ‘dark day’ for Europe, says French PM”

In this CBS piece titled “Did the U.S. or the EU emerge as the winner in Trump trade deal?” it quotes the Société Générale as stating "It is an asymmetric and unbalanced deal," while adding, “The EU decided neither to retaliate nor to increase its tariffs, and is even expected to reduce them. The EU agreed to a bad deal rather than risk trade war escalation."

Aside from lost jobs and public humiliation, the EU’s trade capitulation is also expected to negatively affect its GDP, with Goldman Sachs estimating a 0.4% hit to the EU’s GDP. How much is 0.4%? It comes out to about $775 billion of GDP being transferred from the EU to the US.

Per Bloomberg: “Trump’s EU – US Trade Deal Could Cost Europe for Years to Come”

EU-US tariff agreement ends near term uncertainty in Europe, but the bloc’s humiliation undermines its future.

Yet there is no hiding that this was a thoroughly bad deal for the EU. When the UK [which is not a part of the EU] agreed to a 10% tariff, Brussels insisted it would never accept such humiliating terms. Now the EU has failed to negotiate even this.

I fully expect to read plenty of think pieces from globalist, free-trade outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and National Review decrying this trade deal as bad for the US. I could write it for them. “Trump bad.” Tariffs are a tax on consumers.” “Manufacturing is a poor use of labor.” “Economic nationalism is bad.” Etcetera, etc.

Here is my challenge to those globalist mouthpieces of American economic surrender. Instead of (or in addition to) bashing Trump and this trade deal, try writing some pieces about how great this trade deal is for Europe, because the EU’s capitulation is an embrace of everything that Principled Free Traders have prescribed for the US.

My latest piece at The Blaze has been published, “GM’s Electric Gamble Is Failing - but Barra Won’t Hit the Brakes”

With General Motors’ CEO Mary Barra remaining committed to an all-EV future, it’s fair to start asking who she is beholden to, since it is clearly not GM’s customers, dealers, or shareholders. Since the peak of the EV hype four years ago, GM stock is down about 15% while the market is up about 50%. Wall Street is finally starting to ask questions about what is going on.

It’s long overdue for the General Motors’ board to put the EV distraction behind them. If Mary Barra won’t do it, then they need to find a CEO who will.

It’s behind a paywall, but if you’re a Blaze subscriber, I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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