Did you hear about the EU -Mercosur trade deal?

[Lynx122]

After 25 years of negotiations and stop and go progress the deal passed the council and is now going to be voted on in the european parliament which it's expected to pass. This will create a huge free trade area with over 750 million people. Mercosur Members are Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. Neither China nor the U. S. has a trade deal with Mercosur atm so german cars for example will not have to pay tariffs where U. S. and chinese cars will pay 35%. The U. S. says South America is their "back yard" but they haven't been able to get off their ass and negotiate a trade deal with them in the last century. Too busy bombing and planning coups I guess.

This is a big deal to diversify trade away from the U. S. which everybody is doing atm and just in general it's a good thing to have more free trade and cooperation.

Efta which Switzerland, Norway, Lichtenstein and Iceland are a part of already finished their own trade deal last year with similar terms so basically all of Europe is covered now.

[NathanDavis]

a little bit of news for you...

but first... RIP to the European farmers, I am 100% sure they're not happy at all about this, and they are going to go out of business

and second... USA and China are already in these countries, and they own mining, oil companies, factories... service industry

hell... they even own some of the ports down there, shipping industry and what not

so, in reality... the Europeans are about to pay to China and the USA just so they can "trade" on their backyard

and that's capitalism, globalism and consumerism... nothing new under the sun really

[Lynx122]

The ports take a tiny cut of the trade from a EU perspective it doesn't matter if they're paying a Brazilian owned port or if someone else is owning the port what matters is the free trade agreement. The biggest shipping company in the world by volume MSC is a company founded in Italy and based in Switzerland so you could say everybody is paying Switzerland to trade in the world but the cut that goes to the shipping company is not that big and the cut that goes to the country in taxes is another fraction of that so it doesn't really work like that. This is more of an issue for south amerifa that other people are making money of their business.

[NathanDavis]

I think you're confused here... "biggest shipping company by volume" is not the same as "biggest by revenue" and having the most ships and containers does not mean that you have the most valuable cargo either... and, just because you have the biggest fleet, that does not mean you have the majority of the marketed target

even if they had 30% of the traffic, that's still 70% going elsewhere, so yeah... most of the trade in the world is dominated by America and China

America produces... China manufactures and Europe... lags behind, which is exactly why they have to chase "free deals" for a whole quarter of a century, so for you to say that "America" is lazy with capitalism and globalism, that's just a funny thing to say considering that Texas alone, by itself... has a much bigger trade that most of the European countries one by one...

[Lynx122]

I think you're confused here you have no clue what you're talking about. It's a free trade deal it's something the U. S. used think was good lol. You know when the U. S. was still a rich country? You know something Europe and Asia have in common that the U. S. doesn't? Functioning infrastructure, investment in things that benefit everyone, like public transport that people want to go on. Your economy functions by skimping on everything and then making more money off the crisis that it causes. Like power outages, water shortages, lack of preventative care in health. I wonder how much money the power companies made extra from killing those people in texas. Or how much money was saved on the warning system for those flash floods. It's kind of easy to pump up gdp numbers when you charge 3000 dollars for a drug that costs 6 dollars in other countries. That doesn't mean you're creating value or producing anything. It's called a trillion dollar duct tape economy. Half of it is run on debt because people can't even afford the cost of living anymore. And when the debt bubble bursts again it won't be as easy to just take on national debt to borrow yourself out of the crisis. Sadly England wants to follow you off the cliff they're completely lost.

[NathanDavis]

I see you decided to ignore every point I made... and instead, want to change the script now and say the USA sucks

well, yeah... there's a whole lot of things that do suck in America, on that I agree

but the premise if your post was to imply that the USA does not have a business in South America and that's quite far from the truth

free trade deals do kill the local production... and American farmers are already anemic enough, lol

[Lynx122]

Yes Europe has issues mainly in market integration and defense and also that Russia and the U. S. want to tear the EU apart so they can bully and exploit the individual countries. I don't know what China wants they seem fine sitting back and counting their money for now. But I feel like a lot of European countries get the social contract of society right or closer to right than most and I don't want that to be lost chasing after more short term profit, there's enough places in the world doing that. It is a tense time right now but these trade deals with south america and now India are the right steps for Europe to keep moving forward and stabilising in this turbulent time coming up. It'll take more than that but it's a good sign and the support for the EU is very high because of the Brexit disaster and because Europe is under attack by these propagandists promoting far right politics, selfishness, hate, unwillingness to cooperate that's what they're hoping for anyway. But I'm still optimistic and hopeful I believe in the resilience and that we'll get through this :) And as I said in other replies the quotas on the agriculture imports are very low 1.5% of the EUs beef production and 0.6% of the EU consumption of beef. The EU had more leverage in this negotiatiation that's why they got favorable terms but the french farmers still acted like the world would end. But sorry the EU has to look out for the entire economy and the development into the future not one sector. And I think they did the right thing.

[NathanDavis]

free trade is only good for the 1%...

and it is the base of greed, for those at the top and above... not something the benefits the middle class, and it's something that also buries the poor

it will not end the world, no... but it will end up the living of many farmers, and other industries will follow

the next step after free trade is always the same... consumerism, and consumerism will affect all sectors, not just the farmers

[Lynx122]

Free trade benefited everybody around the world it's just that people have gotten used to this standard of living now so they take it for granted and only see the downsides. We live in a globalized world and you can either go along with it or pay the price. If you look at the U. K. their economy shrunk 8% after leaving the EU. I don't see free trade as harmful fundamentally you need to have a workforce that is equipped to deal with the challenges of today. Burrying the head in the sand won't help. It's better to face the tough assessment of the open market earlier and build up a resilient economy than to try and prevent it. There is no way to escape. So I still believe this is a good decision.

[NathanDavis]

oh yeah... I forgot you live at a "first world country" in Europe

do you? lmao

you're idea of "the whole world" does look like a little bit different than the rest of the world out there

[DryGermanGuy]

Trump will probably sneer and say „25 years? I make 90 deals in 90 days, suckers!“ 🤪

[FreyaRed]

Cheaper Argentinian beef will kill our farmers which try to sell shitty beef that doesn't taste even like beef. Of course Arabs and Asians don't want import EU beef anymore because it's trash.
I think our farmers and feed producers deserve that because despite all subsides for every little fart, they are incapable to produce high quality beef or pork. Fu.. them, welcome Mercosur.

[Lynx122]

The quota of beef that can be imported tariff free is 1.5% of the annual EU production and like 0.6% of the consumption of the EU so this deal will barely impact the farmers at all.

[Xawyx-2]

Never heard about it.

[Lynx122]

It's not fully finished yet but it will be in a few months the major vote that was needed has passed now.

[Xawyx-2]

I see, thanks for the info.

[FunkyMonkee]

What's a mercosur?

[Lynx122]

It's a trading bloick of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and once Venezuela but they're a suspended member they're not part of the trade deal. It stands for Mercado Común del Sur.

[FunkyMonkee]

I see.
Thanks!