Tariff like it's 1897, Trump's Great Economy, Maybe the Best Ever

INCONCEIVABLE!

He’s twaddly on the microphone over Canadian Cheese

Apparently Trump and EU officials have agreed on working towards a zero tariff deal, whatever that means in practice, maybe a push towards the ending the current almost trade war, maybe something for Trump to forget 5 minutes after he gets on his plane…

You mean for Trump to claim that thanks to his tough negotiating he got the EU to make a better deal. He will claim a victory from this.

I’ve already seen people claiming it was a victory.

  1. Create a crisis
  2. Extort concessions to stop the crisis
  3. Claim victory

The art of the deal.

I’d have to see what the actual agreement was, but if Trump’s tariff actions resulted in the EU giving the US concessions and the future trade deal is more advantageous to the US than the old one, then… that’s actually a victory for him. That’s him doing exactly what he said he’d do.

Now that said… I am REALLY dubious that whatever we agreed to with the EU is substantially different from what we had before.

They haven’t agreed to anything new. Like, even less than North Korea. They’ve agreed to talk about a trade deal, or at least getting rid of the last round of tariffs, and not to impose further tariffs while they do so. Given that Trump is the one escalating the tariffs, it’s basically him calling a truce.

Nice economy you’ve got there.

According to details I heard this morning, it’s not an agreement for anything more than, “agree to meet more to work through the issues.” i.e. Intent to reduce tariffs, not actual reduction. Also, intent to purchase more soybeans and LNG, with conditions.

In an appearance in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said they had agreed to hold off on proposed car tariffs, and work to resolve their dispute on steel and aluminum tariffs, while pursuing a bilateral trade deal.

“While we are working on this, we will not go against the spirit of this agreement unless either party terminates the negotiation,” Trump said. “We also will resolve the steel and aluminum tariff issues, and we will resolve retaliatory tariffs.”

While Washington and Brussels pursue those aims, the E.U. will import more U.S. soybeans and liquefied natural gas, or LNG, although Juncker suggested that that agreement came with conditions.

“We are ready to invest in infrastructure, new terminals, which could welcome imports of LNG from the United States and elsewhere, but mainly from the United States, if the conditions were right and price is competitive,” he said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies later Wednesday.

It takes years to hammer out a trade deal; there was no deal. It’s just some mealy-mouthed proclamation that, yeah, trade barriers tend to be a bad thing.

Then again, that’s why previous generations created trade deals and the WTO.

Bear in mind, the EU doesn’t buy soybeans or LNG. Traders and companies in the EU do, and they buy it from wherever it’s cheapest (at a given quality). Also, the EU does not impose a tariff on soybeans, so all this really means is that the US will export less to China (because of the tariffs it imposed in response to Trump’s), so it will be cheaper for European companies to buy. Same basic idea for LNG, except the EU has the ability to fund infrastructure development, something it was doing anyway to wean itself off Russia.

For his supporters maybe? But several things - threatening tariffs/trade wars results in disruptions and uncertainty before hand (stock prices and the like), but, worse, if this does bear fruit (given caveats already given by posters subsequent to yours) he’ll think this is how diplomacy should be conducted.

This was mentioned on the radio show I heard, with a reference that Trump is claiming a victory over nothing, essentially.

As already mentioned, nothing has been agreed upon other than to talk together and to “suspend hostilities” wrt trade. Pretty much the same way the US agreed to suspend hostilities with China a short while ago - an agreement that lasted until Trump’s next temper tantrum.

With respect to natural gas, US gas is not competitive, the EU is looking to diversify it’s supplies, so there is some interest for sure. But US gas really isn’t competitive on price, so there is unlikely to be anything major happening anytime soon. For soy beans, US soy beans have fallen dramatically in price recently (20%?) due to the trade war with China, so the EU is definitely going to buy more there. Both of these developments would have happened with or without an agreement, so Trump is basically trumpeting… nothing. Or - at best he is celebrating that the US will now sell more soybeans to the EU because his trade war with China makes it impossible to sell those soy beans to China.

Why is selling soybeans to the enemy a reason to celebrate? I’m so confused. Why are we even feeding such a great foe? I feel that helping the EU will simply come back to haunt 'Merica!

Well, actually we´re already building infrastructure to get more independent from russian gas.

This is a long planned project that will start next year.

And in the past we got soy beans from south america but as China also started to import soy beans from there our farmers started to import it from the US already (as it is very cheap currently…). There is no need for Junker to intervene because the EU doesn´t have tariffs or restrictions for soy beans… As it is genetic engineered it is used as animal feed in the EU (you need to designate products if they are made with genetic enhanced ingredients and those products really don´t sell here very much)…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-25/why-the-eu-was-already-likely-to-import-more-u-s-soybeans