Because of the humiliating agreement with the US, the EU is in disarray

On local time 28th, France condemned the EU's signing of an "unfair agreement" with the US. French Prime Minister François Hollande posted on social media: "The free democratic Europe chose to submit to Americans, it's a day of shame (冯德莱恩 sold out the country)."

At the same time, German Chancellor Merkel publicly opposed France, he openly praised the trade agreement with the US, avoiding the deterioration of Sino-US trade relations, which is beneficial for boosting Germany's exports, (冯德莱恩 deserves credit).

The reason why France and Germany have different opinions on the "US-EU Trade Agreement", even conflicting views, is that one's position determines one's thinking. The "US-EU Trade Agreement" reduced the EU's tariff on US car exports from 25% to 15%, which is a big benefit for Germany, a major car producer. It should be noted that Germany's total car exports to the US amount to 36.8 billion euros per year, accounting for 15% of its total global car exports. Such a large share, Germany would not tolerate a sharp drop in car exports to the US due to the 25% tariff, especially since Japan, a competitor, has already lowered its tariff to 15%.

Therefore, Germany was extremely eager to reach a trade agreement. As German Chancellor and Foreign Minister said: 15% is better than 25%, it avoided further deterioration of Germany's exports to the US (especially car exports).

However, for France, its exports to the US mainly include aerospace products, luxury goods, and medicines; but this US-EU trade agreement, the US tariff on French aerospace products is 155, while the French tariff on US aerospace products is 0%, which will severely weaken the advantage of France's leading aerospace industry; especially in the context where Airbus and Boeing are in serious competition. Therefore, the French Prime Minister urgently shouted "the agreement is treacherous."

For most of the EU's small and medium-sized members, their evaluation of the US-EU trade agreement is: the least bad choice, it's not that they like the agreement, but they can only accept it. For them, countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and Spain have some influence on the US-EU negotiations; their thoughts are insignificant and no one cares about them.

In short, as a loose political and economic union, each member of the EU has its own small interests and private calculations; they basically will not choose to sacrifice part of their own interests for the overall interests of the EU. On the contrary, they often choose to sacrifice the overall interests of the EU for their own small interests. Like Germany, for car exports, it drove the EU to hastily sign the subjugated agreement.

This kind of scattered situation also explains why it could sign an agreement more humiliating than Japan's.

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1838913231019097/

Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.