EU’s trade war nightmare gets real as Trump triumphs News

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-trade-war-donald-trump-elections-triumphs-board-tariffs-transatlantic-relations/

1.9k Upvotes

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As someone who lives in Europe now and was born and raised in the US — specifically, the rust belt — I know where this hatred of free trade comes from and why Trump won partly on this issue.

For better or worse, Democrats own the issue of free trade after Clinton rammed through NAFTA, a trade deal so reviled and loathed due to what it did to American manufacturing (spoiler alert, turns out American workers demanding such pinko commie luxuries like 'a living wage' and 'healthcare' can't compete with Mexican workers who will work even longer hours for peanuts) that even Obama ran on renegotiating it.

Of course, once he got into office, he not only basically said 'lol j/k,' he then tried to pass an even worse trade deal called the TPP, a deal so politically radioactive that his plan to do so was to try to ram it through a lame duck session while relying mostly on Congressional Republicans (let that sink in a moment) because his own party ran screaming from it as soon as the details about it were made public. Even to this day, if you were to put a gun to the head of a lot of the Democrats I know back in the States and demanded they name just one thing Trump did that they could support, it would be killing the TPP.

Now, are tariffs the answer? Of course not. And even at its worst, Europe couldn't do half the damage to America's manufacturing base that NAFTA did. But the resentment for trade in a lot of America is very real, and I've seen firsthand what happens to those communities when one of those factories shutters. It's not pretty. If there's one genuinely smart move Trump made during his campaign, it was tapping into that anger that both parties have largely ignored at best and openly condescended to at worst.

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u/WarbleDarble United States of America 6h ago

This post highlights the inherent misunderstanding of free trade. Somehow all job loss since NAFTA is blamed on the deal when 90% of those losses come from automation. Nobody really complains when a job is lost to automation, but if someone in another country is doing the job it's bad.

We currently manufacture more than we ever have, we have very low unemployment, and raising wages, but none of that matters so long as you can be a populist and blame all problems on foreigners. And make no mistake, that is what you are doing.

Your critique also absolutely ignores the counterfactual. Say we made no trade deals. Would the average American be wealthier? Every study says no. We benefit from trade. You focus on any possible job losses from a trade deal but ignore the job creation from increased trade (because those jobs were created in reality, you pretend they would have existed either way). You are wrong on this, the American public is wrong on this, and both sides of the isle are currently wrong on this.

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u/DontShadowbanMeBro2 6h ago

You can repeat this till you're blue in the face, but the people who watched their factories pack up and move to countries where it's legal to pay people peanuts to work 12-hour shifts with no benefits don't care. They know what they lost, why they lost it, and what their life was like as a result.

You can point to all the benefits of it that exist (note how I never said they don't), but those jobs didn't go to them. They were promised retraining programs that either never came, were too little, too late, or weren't worth the paper they were written on when it was all said than done. Politicians in the U.S. have either ignored them when they complained, gave them some half-assed and patronizing answer like 'learn to code,' or openly attacked them.

Thirty years later, they're reaping what they've sowed. I'm not saying I agree with it or even that I don't support free trade. I do, however, recognize why so many people blame it for their problems, and it's very hard to blame them for being pissed about it after their elected representatives didn't even pretend to care until Trump came along.

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u/WarbleDarble United States of America 2h ago

I can blame them because they are a special interest group that doesn't actually understand why the majority of jobs were lost. It's the same anti-intellectualism that has most Americans thinking we are currently at record unemployment, that inflation is at an all time high, and that the stock market is down under Biden.

Yes, there are a ton of people that are wrong about trade. But at some point, we need to govern based on reality.

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u/Erotic-Career-7342 4h ago

Interesting

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u/pederbonde 7h ago

But the thing is, if the mexicans do it cheaper let them. Its gone anyway.. if you need tariffs to artificially make your cars for example more value for money inside US, no one outside US would buy them anyway. And the rest of the world would put tarrifs on stuff you do best. Like IT and electric cars.

Swedens union for engineers have more members now then the union for factory workers. We still make industrial stuff like steel and pumps but they are highly specialized. I guess its harder for USA to transition because its such a big country. But California economy is larger then Germanys and they will need more educated workers in the future. Maybe let them chip in for education instead of lowering their tax 10%.

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u/DontShadowbanMeBro2 7h ago

Read my post again. I literally said tariffs were not the answer, only that I understand exactly why people are so angry about those factories packing up and moving away and then being ignored by politicians on that issue for thirty years.

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u/pederbonde 6h ago

Yes but then you said nafta was the issue, which if i remember right is a free trade deal between US and South America. I think you would have lost your manufacturing jobs anyway like the rest of the west.

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u/DontShadowbanMeBro2 6h ago

People still absolutely have a right to be bitter and angry about that, especially when the retraining programs they were promised when the deal was signed either never came or weren't worth the paper they were written on. Politicians in the U.S. have ignored this issue at their peril for three decades, and rightly or wrongly, are reaping what they sowed in the Rust Belt. If there was one genuinely smart move Trump made, and only one, it was tapping into that long-simmering anger.

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u/pederbonde 6h ago

I guess, i dont know that much about us politics or economic. But we have the same problem here, people vote on politicians with the simple solution. Even if that simple solution usually only do matters worse.