EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/01/20/eu-parliament-freezes-us-trade-deal-after-trump-s-tariff-threats-over-greenland_6749625_4.html

by pjmlp • 6 months ago

117 86 6 months ago

lemonde.fr

reallymental2• 6 months ago

All this hullabaloo about trade, tariffs and international relations has really got me thinking about the role of career "diplomats". I know of (peripherally) a few european people who have studied for this as a career, they've spent a lot of time on it (education wise). From far away it seems like a professional-level thing like being a doctor or a lawyer. They spend a lot of time studying, then working at the gov level as a lackey for a few years, then they gain some "contacts" and then... what? They join a "think-tank"? They help draft "policy"?

What's the point of all this? Aren't they all supposed to be just elected officials, and with the help of admin, supposed to just do their jobs?

I know I sound naive, I know it's more than this. I know interpersonal relationships matter and that's what these "contacts" are. But if all this can be thrown away by the actions of the few, what's the point of all this effort? Just simplify the entire structure, slash all this admin to the bare bones and let the people at the top show their competency, instead of the admin covering for them.

avidiax• 6 months ago

There are many affairs of state that won't be skillfully managed by someone learning on the job every 4-8 years.

You wouldn't replace the entire CIA with political appointees every 4-8 years would you?

The CDC will need people that remember COVID in 30 years, will it not?

Surely, the delegation to Tehran should have some people that speak Farsi and have known their counterparts for 15-20 years, right?

The people at the top can't possibly have institutional knowledge for all the institutions under their control. Even a statesman like George H. W. Bush only has institutional knowledge for one branch of the military and the CIA. Should we have shown his competency in the affairs of the state department, department of energy, education, FBI, etc.?

reallymental2• 6 months ago

Appreciate the reply. I see your argument, I'll have to reframe my statements better.

davedx• 6 months ago

"Carney said this more isolationist approach, where there's a "world of fortresses," will make countries poorer, fragile and less sustainable. But it's coming nonetheless and Canada must work with like-minded allies where possible to push back against domination by larger, wealthier and well-armed countries."

New trade relationships are being forged surprisingly quickly in the midst of all this. Anyone have a list of what's been recently announced? I can think of Mercator, EU-India, Canada-??...

perihelions• 6 months ago

(Mercosur*, for "Mercado Común del Sur"[0]; Mercator was a geographer from the 16th century[1]).

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... ("Glossary:Mercosur")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator ("Gerardus Mercator")

inglor_cz4• 6 months ago

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 tape.

(For an analogy, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany put most of its regulations aside to build some infrastructure for import of liquified gas in mere 6 weeks or so. The same infrastructure, under peace conditions, would take some 10 years to litigate against every NIMBY and eco-organization out there.)

SllX• 6 months ago

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.

joe_mamba7• 6 months ago

I would expect it to get vetoed by special farmer interests

IDK man, I feel like supporting the local farming industry is a pretty important strategic move, even if it's a loss leader.

We already offshored manufacturing, energy supply and IT to our "allies" in the past and it's biting us in the ass right now.

Do we really want to repeat the same mistake again with food?

docdeek• 6 months ago

Special farmer interests are about 25% of the entire EU budget (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20211118STO...).

There are still farmer protests here in France every day against this deal. There will be a lot of pressure on French MEPs to vote against it when it goes to the EP for the final vote.

SideburnsOfDoom• 6 months ago

Canada-??..

Canada-China:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm24k6kk1rko

https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/business/canada-ev-deal-...

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/01/16/prime-...

rsynnott4• 6 months ago

It’s more acceleration of existing treaties. Negotiation of the EU<>Mercosur treaty started in 1999.

thecopy2• 6 months ago

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.

littlestymaar• 6 months ago

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

sschueller3• 6 months ago

Exactly, just see the gal of garbage spewed by for example Scott Bessent at the WEF yesterday. The arrogance is outright insulting.

pjc50• 6 months ago

I guess we find out how much of this is cult of personality and how much is just the propaganda system.

thecopy2• 6 months ago

Vance doesn't have the cult of personality

graemep2• 6 months ago

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...

rsynnott4• 6 months ago

Do you really think the threat that “JD Vance might be unhappy with you, and would direct the literally tens of people who like him to vote against you in primaries” would keep the Republicans in congress under control? Trump’s whole thing is his weaponisation of a cult of personality. Vance doesn’t have a personality at all (and I’d assume he was chosen for that reason, Trump not wanting the competition.) He’d be dead in the water from day one.

thrance2• 6 months ago

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.

ViewTrick10025• 6 months ago

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

kzrdude• 6 months ago

That is a very simplified take. Congress has been locking up for the past decades and is now unable to do useful regulation for the people. Much of it is due to how the funding of candidates works and the feedback loop effect it had on the political culture.

Trump is a symptom of this failure of political culture too.

smashah2• 6 months ago

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.

atoav2• 6 months ago

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 conglomerate of polticians, billionaires and CEOs thought it would profit them (it did). You can pick one of the issues mentioned above and go deep on why it is in the bad shape it is today and the answer will always boil down to lobbying and money in politics.

This are the much more insightful reasons and you get there just by asking "but why?" two times like a yound child. Totally recommended.

panda-giddiness• 6 months ago

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.

nosianu• 6 months ago

You will have to translate this German language article, but this is NOT Trump. It is about the tech billionaires supporting this quest, and why they want it.

https://orf.at/stories/3417584/

I doubt Trump would have ever even thought of Greenland on his own. I think was told about it, and the narrative planted in his head deliberately.

This focus on "Trump" in Internet comments and media irks me to no end. Trump is not a failure and not the wrong person in the job - he is ideal for those behind him. The money does not like public attention.

raverbashing• 6 months ago

But if you repeat the idea as your own so it becomes

(Yes the president can't tell Greenland from Iceland, but neither half of those "tech bros" who failed geography at school

captn3m0• 6 months ago

We even know which billionaire planted the Greenland idea: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/ronald-laude...

mrtksn• 6 months ago

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.

thrance2• 6 months ago

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.

4gotunameagain3• 6 months ago

If you look at old interviews of Putin and Lavrov, it is clear that they had been warning about NATO expansion and Ukraine for a long time.

On 12 June 2020, Ukraine joined NATO's enhanced opportunity partner interoperability program.

On 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.

I think Putin is a dictator, but comparing Trump to Putin is simply clueless.

tchalla2• 6 months ago

This means that US keeps paying the old WTO MFN tariffs (low) while EU keeps paying the high ~15% tariffs like it has since the July “deal”.

orwin2• 6 months ago

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

tchalla2• 6 months ago

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 those costs. I

andsoitis• 6 months ago

Tariffs are paid by importers, but the cost is usually shared between:

- Foreign producers

- Domestic consumers

- Domestic companies (via lower profits)

Who pays more depends on bargaining power and market structure.

lifestyleguru2• 6 months ago

This whole thing is slowly becoming irreversible. Canada should join the EU.

chucksta• 6 months ago

The European Union would need a new name then

lifestyleguru2• 6 months ago

Looking at the globe it makes more sense for Canada to join EU, than Greenland belonging to US. Call it Arctic Union, whatever.

alpineman• 6 months ago

Time to buy European too

pu_pe• 6 months ago

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.

thefz• 6 months ago

Sometimes I wonder how great the united states will be once they will not have a single ally left (bar Russia fo course).

honzabe2• 6 months ago

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.

EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

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