[Potemkin]

I totally disagree with that, but we've already discussed this. The next thing we can expect is a servile war perhaps.

Day Without Immigrants 2017

You mean the Revolt of the Hispanics? Yup, it's coming too....

[hartmut]

No, that is not true.

Some tariffs are higher in the EU (cars) while others are higher in the US (trucks, 25%).

It's quite while ago, some twenty years, when I was in US (Florida). I do remember my amazement when I saw those dinosaurs. Maybe protectionism is a bad idea ..

Taking all traded items into consideration, tariffs between the EU and US are balanced. Overall, they are very low and don't have a significant impact.

This might be, but it is hard to find a sound estimate in that jungle of highly complicated and manifold treaties.

Even if we reduce the tariffs for US cars to zero, the US will still not export cars because US cars are shit.

German car manufacturers would benefit from US import taxes because they manufacture in the US and even export from the US.

BMW is the biggest US car exporter. If you see on German Autobahn a completely misshaped BMW (a so called SUV), it comes from a US fab. And there are a lot of them.

Don't pretend that what Trump says has anything to do with trade. He's just trying to get Republican elected in a district in Pennsylvania that has a lot of steel works.

Of course it has "to do with trade", because it will affect it.
But I am close do you. It is not fare fetched to see a typical short time manoeuvre of a struggling populist.

[Atlantis]

If we stay on this trajectory for another couple decades then maybe but none of that is likely to come about any time soon and Trump couldn't pull it off even with a perfect storm of catalyzing events. There could be a major terrorist attack on top of an economic crash and Trump wouldn't have the wherewithal to make it work for him.

Even dimwitted GWB was able to get America behind his war in Iraq, and even managed to get reelected. Trump is far more ruthless in the choice of his means. He wouldn't hesitate a second to start a trade war or even a war to unite the nation in a jingoistic frenzy. Trump doesn't need any terrorist attack. He can pull a crisis out off the hat like a magician. His supporters believe that the US can easily win a trade war. So, why shouldn't he do exactly that, if the whole world is "killing" America? And if that doesn't work, he can escalate the situation in NK, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, the South China Sea, etc., or ref up the arms race with Russia. There are more than enough options for starting a major conflict.

One thing is certain, the US elite won't solve the country's social problems by neoliberal policies. The only option is for the empire to fuck its vassal states harder. There will never be any "left-wing options" in the US. I don't know why you are deluding yourself.

[foxdemon]

A man's gotta have dreams, eh foxdemon...?

Quite so. What’s more, there is such a thing as fate. Futility should not dissuade a man of honour.

The bourgeois ideology of 'human rights', 'free markets' and social and economic 'liberalism', which had such revolutionary force back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, has now begun to eat itself in the dying days of late capitalism, just as the financial system has been eating the industrial forces of production in the 'developed' world from the 1980s onwards. The old world is dying, and a new world is struggling to be born. The birth pangs will be painful, the birth bloody, and the first birthcry a scream of agony and outrage. But it will be born.

It is worse than that. They have also managed to appropriate centuries of cultural endeavour and are destroying that tradition along with the society of petty snobbery they created for themselves.

The world is changing. The PC bourgeois make a graceful adaption impossible. Being who they, of course they will throw everyone else to the wolves first. Restoring some sense of reason to the establishment may well be impossible. But that doesn’t mean one should give up. After all, there is still revenge.

[Potemkin]

Quite so. What’s more, there is such a thing as fate. Futility should not dissuade a man of honour.

Indeed. In fact, dedication to a futile cause is a badge of honour. It means that one's motives are pure.

It is worse than that. They have also managed to appropriate centuries of cultural endeavour and are destroying that tradition along with the society of petty snobbery they created for themselves.

What else can one expect from a class of economic parasites? They live off the productive labour of others while producing nothing themselves. All they know how to do is to consume, to destroy.

The world is changing. The PC bourgeois make a graceful adaption impossible. Being who they, of course they will throw everyone else to the wolves first. Restoring some sense of reason to the establishment may well be impossible. But that doesn’t mean one should give up. After all, there is still revenge.

Quite so. As every gentleman understands, it is the purest and noblest of human motivations.

[jimjam]

It was Bill Clinton’s top priority in the last days of his presidency to award China permanent normal trade relations in the WTO. He hoped that it would cement his legacy as a champion of free trade and corporations could hardly contain themselves at the prospect of having 1.3 billion new Chinese paying customers. The concerns of unions about competing against foreign workers who were paid in cents for their daily work were swiftly swept aside.

Today we’re living with the legacy of the “China Shock”: mass unemployment but also social disintegration, less marriage, more opioid abuse and more people dropping out of the labor market and requiring government aid. While he might be trying, Trump still has plenty of ground to cover to even begin to catch up with the damage that Clinton did to the working class.

[Atlantis]

Today we’re living with the legacy of the “China Shock”: mass unemployment but also social disintegration, less marriage, more opioid abuse and more people dropping out of the labor market and requiring government aid. While he might be trying, Trump still has plenty of ground to cover to even begin to catch up with the damage that Clinton did to the working class.

What are you talking about? The US is as near to full-employment as it can get. There is no "mass unemployment" as in the 1930s. But Trump's protectionism is bound to get you there.

That the US is a dysfunctional country is not the fault of the Chinese. Internationally, the US is still the most prosperous country in the world. You are sucking the world's wealth into Wall Street like a hoover.

The problem your leaders have clearly identified is that a parasite like the US, which is living at the expense of others, cannot in the long-term compete with countries like China, where people do the actual work.

The empire has corrupted you and you don't have the moral integrity to do something about it or to even look the facts squarely into the eye.

[Atlantis]

Here it comes Donald, this one is just for you, enjoy!

Brussels publishes US tariffs retaliation lists totaling €6.4 billion

The list includes products worth €2.8 billion, which the EU can target with tariffs of 25 percent at any moment after notifying the list to the WTO.

Brussels Friday published two lists with American products that it will target if U.S. President Donald Trump imposes increased tariffs on EU exports of steel and aluminium.

A senior European official said the EU’s response list was for “stakeholder consultations” and added that the total value of American exports targeted could reach “€6.4 billion all added together.”

The Commission needed to act now to make sure it notified the lists to the WTO within a 90-day deadline, but the decision whether to use the lists would be taken only after three months. Brussels needed to act now because “you may be exempted today and three months later the situation changes.”

Politico

That's for starters, Donald.

The EU is already loading the guns for the 2nd round:

EU prepares revenue-based tax on US tech giants

The European Commission is to unveil plans for a digital tax on big US tech companies. The move is aimed at recovering billions of euros from multinationals that divert their earnings to low-tax nations.

According to a draft plan, Brussels proposes big tech companies should be taxed on overall revenue in the EU and not just on their profits, at a rate of around 3 percent.

The plan is fanning fears of a further worsening of trade relations between the EU and the United States as Brussels prepares to retaliate against US President Donald Trump's move to impose higher tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

The new EU tax plan would target companies with global annual turnover above €750 million ($924 million), such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb and Uber.

Smaller startups that struggle to compete with the giants would be spared, as would firms like Netflix, which depend on subscriptions.

DW

Sorry Donald, we'll have to hit corporate American were it hurts.

And watch out there is more coming from the East (your West, isn't it confusing?):

Amazon's Japanese headquarters raided by nation's regulator

And guess what, we have a nice lady from Denmark called Vestager who loves to look into the affairs of US multinationals.

Donald is a pussy, Donald can't even win a trade war, so sad!

Stay tuned, more to follow soon.

[Atlantis]

Here we go, Donnie boy, from Europe with love:

Leo says Trump is right about one thing - Europe needs to stop relying on the US for its defence

Yankees go home!

And thanks for initiating the great Eurasian future:

EU & China close to bilateral investment treaty and free trade agreement

Even if you don't want to trade with the world, the world can still trade, even without your protection racket.

Keep it coming Donnie boy, tariffs, taxes, and more tariffs ... the more, the merrier.

Show the Krauts you can into Krupp steel too.

[hartmut]

It was Bill Clinton’s top priority in the last days of his presidency to award China permanent normal trade relations in the WTO. ...

WTO is principally independent in relation to US.
Sorry, but "we call BS".

[Atlantis]

Hey Donny boy, this is no way to do a trade war, first you threaten everybody with tariffs and than you walk back granting exceptions until there is nothing left.

U.S. top trade diplomat says 'nobody wins' trade war but readies China action

The administration has been forced to walk back on some of its steel and aluminium measures, granting exemptions to Canada and Mexico and entering talks with the European Union and others to discuss potential exemptions.

If you let that old wanker Juncker from Luxembourg grab you by the pussy, what is big brothers Xi Jinping going to do with you? A man needs respect, grow up Donny boy

You see, this is how you do trade war, hit Corporate American where it hurts. The bottom line is the profit line.

EU proposes $6.2-billion tax on Facebook, Google and other tech giants

The initiative, which would need several rounds of approvals, comes amid a rapidly heating trade conflict between Europe and the United States. Absent action by President Trump, new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium imports are set to go into effect Friday, and EU leaders have threatened countermeasures to follow shortly after.

It also comes as Facebook's actions are under a microscope, following revelations that the Cambridge Analytica data firm misused the data of 50 million U.S. Facebook users to help Trump win the presidency and that Russians also targeted U.S. voters on the social network.

[Atlantis]

So Donald, to "win trade wars is easy"? How come you lost before it even started? If you exempt 90% of steel imports what's the point? The Donald can't do trade wars and the Brexshitters can't do Brexit. So sad!

Trade war averted for now between US, Europe

BERLIN (AP) — The U.S. government said Thursday that the European Union will be among the trading partners that will be spared from an immediate decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the U.S.

The move averts the imminent risk of a trade war with the EU, which had threatened to strike back with tariffs on a range of U.S. goods.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in Washington that President Donald Trump has decided to “pause” the tariffs for countries that are engaged in trade negotiations with the United States. He said the 28-country EU would be exempt, along with Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina and Brazil.

Trump had planned to impose tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminium. The sanctions are meant to hit China for flooding the world with cheap steel and aluminium but in practice would have hurt many allies, such as the EU.

Earlier, Germany’s economy minister said he had found officials in Washington “open to our arguments” when he visited to try and avert the tariffs.

Germany’s Peter Altmaier and EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom both visited Washington this week to seek the exemption.

Altmaier told Germany’s parliament Thursday “it is a question of fundamental significance: whether we all stand for open and fair world markets in the future.”

[Atlantis]

Trump exempted most countries from the punitive tariff on steel and aluminium imports in the expectation of revised trade agreements that would favor the US. In the case of Canada and Mexico, he clearly wants to revise Nafta to the unilateral benefit of the US. With Europe, TTIP has already been abandoned and there is no new trade deal being negotiated. If Trump thinks he can press advantageous conditions from the EU, he should think twice. As Macron made it clear, there can be no question of a new deal with the US as long as Trump doesn't ratify the Paris climate agreement.


Macron: EU ‘mad’ to do trade deal with US after Paris climate withdrawal

‘I’m not in favour of showing any softness to those who decide to break those rules,’ the French president said about the deal struck in his capital in 2015

French president Emmanuel Macron has warned the EU would be “mad” to sign a trade agreement with countries that refused to honour the Paris climate agreement.

Macron was speaking a day after the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, implored Trump to consider “a new trade deal between the US and the EU”, as a way of lowering trade tensions over steel and aluminium tariffs.

Speaking at a conference in Brussels, Macron said that since Trump had indicated US withdrawal from the Paris deal, a new trade deal would undermine clean energy producers in Europe, and project a message of weakness abroad.

Far from bending to the will of the US, “trade agreements should reverse the burden of proof,” Macron said. “They should be a way of spreading our standards. Anyone who signs an agreement with the EU should be committing to put the Paris Agreement into practice…

“We even go beyond our own rules and ask our own economic agents to do the same. Why should we sign a trade agreement with powers that say they don’t want to implement the Paris Agreement? We would be mad [to do so].”

Macron said that the world’s multilateral rules-based trade policy was “threatened by unilateral temptations”.

“I’m not in favour of showing any softness to those who decide to break those rules,” he said. “We can no longer pursue objectives that work against our own [climate] policies inside our own borders.”

EU: ‘No new trade deals with countries not in Paris Agreement’

Doing so would “discourage” Europe’s clean energy investors who might suffer from unfair competition as a result, he added.

The French leader also made an impassioned plea for a European carbon floor price, and a border tax to prevent cheap, carbon-intensive products entering the EU market which could undermine cleaner local producers.

Macron called for the EU’s budget – currently being negotiated – to increase the fifth of budget spending currently earmarked for climate measures. This is likely to upset some other EU states, such as Poland, which has painted climate action as a drag on economic growth.

“In the [European] Council debate, we have to set an objective that none of the expenditure is hostile to the climate,” he said. “Setting climate spending at 40% of the budget would be ambitious compared to today but I think we can achieve it.”

Macron’s oration brought what would normally have been a staid sustainable finance conference to its feet for a one minute standing ovation, with attendees enthralled at the sight of an EU leader ‘walking the walk’ in the face of Trumpian assault on Paris.

“I think he’s right,” Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief told Climate Home News immediately after hearing Macron’s comments linking trade deals to the Paris accord. “What more can I say?”

Last month, CHN reported the French foreign minister, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, said that if Trump withdrew the US form the Paris agreement, there would be “no trade agreement – the US knows what to expect”.

That position was subsequently backed up by the European Commission and the practice is already implemented in some of the EU’s latest trade deals. Macron’s comments on Thursday were the first time a European head of state has referred to the precondition.

Earlier in the day, the UN’s special climate envoy, Michael Bloomberg, told the conference that under Trump, Washington was “out of synch with the national zeitgeist but it matters less”.

US cities and regions representing emissions roughly equivalent to the UK, France and Germany combined remained committed to the Paris Agreement, he said.

In a bid partly intended to reverse the shortfall in climate funding caused by the US’ reneging on Obama-era spending commitments [link], the Global Covenant of Mayors issued a new funding call in Brussels.

Multilateral banks including the EIB, EBRD and World Bank, appealed to states, pension funds and investment houses for $200m to fund developing cities and $600m for enhanced credit financing.

This sum could then be leveraged up to $6bn, according to Cristiana Fragola, a director of the covenant.

“If pension funds – most of which spend just one-two percent of their funds on climate action – were to allocate even a minor portion of their assets to this call, we could really move the needle substantially,” she told CHN.

[annatar1914]

Trump exempted most countries from the punitive tariff on steel and aluminium imports in the expectation of revised trade agreements that would favor the US. In the case of Canada and Mexico, he clearly wants to revise Nafta to the unilateral benefit of the US. With Europe, TTIP has already been abandoned and there is no new trade deal being negotiated. If Trump thinks he can press advantageous conditions from the EU, he should think twice. As Macron made it clear, there can be no question of a new deal with the US as long as Trump doesn't ratify the Paris climate agreement.


Macron: EU ‘mad’ to do trade deal with US after Paris climate withdrawal

I think the EU will cave on this. Why? Because Trump's America protects them, from everybody. They may not like giving in to a philistine American boor, but they will. America's job as she perceives it in Europe remains, of keeping the Europeans (especially the Germans) down and the Russians out.

[Atlantis]

I think the EU will cave on this. Why? Because Trump's America protects them, from everybody. They may not like giving in to a philistine American boor, but they will. America's job as she perceives it in Europe remains, of keeping the Europeans (especially the Germans) down and the Russians out.

What is there to cave into?

As far as I know there is not single demand, so far. And Trump himself shot down TTIP, for which we ought to be grateful.

Macron has a strong position in arguing that we shouldn't do any trade agreements with countries that don't sign up to the Paris agreement.

Quite honestly, I wouldn't mind if we traded less with the US and more with Russia and the emerging economies. The EU has been very busy negotiating advanced trade deals with partners around the globe. We don't need a US bully.

[annatar1914]

What is there to cave into?

As far as I know there is not single demand, so far. And Trump himself shot down TTIP, for which we ought to be grateful.

Macron has a strong position in arguing that we shouldn't do any trade agreements with countries that don't sign up to the Paris agreement.

Quite honestly, I wouldn't mind if we traded less with the US and more with Russia and the emerging economies. The EU has been very busy negotiating advanced trade deals with partners around the globe. We don't need a US bully.

The demands are coming, already are, as with the insistence to raise military spending as a percentage of GDP. War is coming, and while you personally might like to just leave things alone and peacefully trade, that's not what will happen.

[SpecialOlympian]

Not really, Trump has the attention span of a gold fish and forgot about the NATO defense budget commitment a while back. Waffling on being committed to the NATO defense pact was a total power move, one that was definitely going to bring people to the table.

But yeah, it's totally believable that the same dumbass who rang Flynn up at 3 AM becuase he couldn't figure out if a weak or strong dollar is better for exports totally has a nuanced view of international trade, economics, and especially currency conversion.

It's absolutely, completely plausibe that the same guy whose subordinates routinely refer to him as a "fucking retard" is playing 11th dimensional chess. Like the time he tricked everyone into thinking he was senile by being unable to find his limo.

[annatar1914]

Not really, Trump has the attention span of a gold fish and forgot about the NATO defense budget commitment a while back. Waffling on being committed to the NATO defense pact was a total power move, one that was definitely going to bring people to the table.

But yeah, it's totally believable that the same dumbass who rang Flynn up at 3 AM becuase he couldn't figure out if a weak or strong dollar is better for exports totally has a nuanced view of international trade, economics, and especially currency conversion.

It's absolutely, completely plausibe that the same guy whose subordinates routinely refer to him as a "fucking retard" is playing 11th dimensional chess. Like the time he tricked everyone into thinking he was senile by being unable to find his limo.

Ah yes, you are exhibiting as is your wont as I recall, the Cult of Personal Intellect that you share interestingly enough with your blood brothers among the the other reactionaries. Hitler wasn't exactly-contrary to propaganda-a genius either, with bohemian artist schedules and banker's hours when in his case iron discipline besides iron will personally would have made something of a difference. He thought he was also quite brilliant, as did Mussolini and Franco and the rest of the Fascistic bandits. What Trump has is a cabinet full of generals and civilian professional warmongers, even among the lawyers and economists. There's your intellect, just enough for determined men of action. You don't need brilliance to be
dangerous. In fact, a certain measure of ''stupidity'' (or rather Will overriding Intellect) is a vital ingredient for a man of action. You have to be a little smart, but not too smart, while your more brilliant competitors are engaging in onanistic analysis, the man of action goes in for the kill.

Instincts of a Predator, an Apex Predator.

[SpecialOlympian]

Trump: Famous for listening to his advisors and following through on their plans.

Also Hitler was able to write his own book, so Adolph has a one up on Trump there.

[annatar1914]

Trump: Famous for listening to his advisors and following through on their plans.

Also Hitler was able to write his own book, so Adolph has a one up on Trump there.

1. Trump doesn't listen to advisors he's about to fire, same as other leaders.

2. Herr Hitler didn't write his own books either. Let's just say they helped.