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It is very disturbing that many are justifying the EU's trade war surrender to Trump by saying: 'we have to do it otherwise the US won't defend Ukraine' Will EU citizens accept being US vassals in order to stop Ukraine becoming a Russian vassal? Full video: davekeating.substack.com/p/video-what...

I don't understand your argument Dave. There was no US-EU trade deal done. The optics for trump tariffs are for MAGA voters who don't understand they have to pay those additional tariffs. this is all theatre for trump. it's not really about trade.

or to put it another way. MAGA voters were cheering & hollering "U-S-A" all night after the "biggest trade deal ever" was "done" by shaking hands with Ursula. Meanwhile, no deal was actually done and Europeans talk about "the start of a process".

What was agreed wasn't a deal, it was a unilateral surrender. The EU agreed to accept the 15% tariffs and not object to them at the WTO, and they agreed to extortionate demand to pay billions in energy and weapons. Whatever the details end up being, the Europeans surrendered.

but EU member states were already buying US energy and weapons. How do you surrender to something you're already doing? Trump got his "biggest deal ever" headline and has already moved on to giving putin "10 or 12" days to end the war....as if he has an amazon delivery that day!

This is a good explainer of why what the EU has done has destroyed the global rules-based trade order and locked it into servitude:

But there is no "turnberry deal" Dave. The EU is not "Locked into" anything, USA is. You're conflating optics designed for MAGA voters - who don't understand they pay the additional tariffs - with something else.

In fact it seems to me that the people resolutely defending von der Leyen right now and deluding themselves into thinking the EU is playing chess while Trump is playing checkers are remainers in the UK. The EU does bad things sometimes. This is one of those times.

I'm in Switzerland Dave and the take here is that nothing has actually been agreed and the white house statement is bonkers. It presents tariffs as "EU payments to the US" (e.g., 15% on autos/pharma), exaggerating wins. There are also contradictions on pharma & investments.