Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The EU has directly threatened the USA and all other countries which don’t embrace the “voluntary” Paris Agreement, by insisting ratification of the Paris Agreement be a mandatory clause in all future EU trade deals. But history suggests this is an empty threat.
EU to refuse to sign trade deals with countries that don’t ratify Paris climate change accord
Jon Stone
Monday 12 February 2018 15:00 GMT
Trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom says Paris clause ‘needed in all EU trade agreements’
The European Union will refuse to sign trade deals with countries that do not ratify the Paris climate change agreement and take steps to combat global warming, under a new Brussels policy.
Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU’s trade chief, said a binding reference to the Paris agreement would be “needed in all EU trade agreements” from now on, noting that it had been included in a deal with Japan.
She said upcoming deals with Mexico and the South American trade bloc Mercosur would also include the clause.
European Commission spokesperson confirmed that the new EU policy would also apply to a post-Brexit trade deal with the UK – meaning Britain would risk its trade deal with the bloc were it ever to try to back out of the accord.
The move effectively means the 500-million-citizen bloc is throwing its trade might behind tackling climate change.
But the policy also means a future trade deal with the US as long as Donald Trump is in office is off the table for now. The US President has indicated that he will not sign up to the deal to cut greenhouse emissions and has said he wants to renegotiate it – a plan most other countries, including the UK, have rejected.
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The EU directly named the USA in a statement a few days ago;
EU Tells Trump: No Paris Climate Deal, No Free Trade
Dave Keating , CONTRIBUTOR
FEB 8, 2018
When Donald Trump took office last year, the assumption was that the transatlantic trade and investment partnership was dead.
The controversial free trade deal between the EU and the U.S., known as TTIP, was already years in development and was a big focus in Europe, particularly with left-wing protesters who said the EU would necessarily have to lower its environmental, health and safety standards to American levels. When Trump was elected on an anti-free-trade platform in 2016, these activists found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being on the same side as the new U.S. president.
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It is in this context that France’s foreign affairs minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne told the French Parliament last week that his country will insist that TTIP never be revived if Trump carries through on his promise to leave the Paris Agreement.
“One of our main demands is that any country who signs a trade agreement with EU should implement the Paris Agreement on the ground,” Lemoyne said. “No Paris Agreement, no trade agreement. The U.S. knows what to expect.”
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The USA currently has a $184 billion / year trade deficit with the EU.
This isn’t the first time the EU has tried using terms of trade to bully other countries into complying with their green demands. Last time it didn’t work out well for the EU.
EU aircraft carbon emissions tax crashes and burns
Anthony Watts / November 12, 2012
From the BBC comes this bit of good news:
EU suspends aircraft emissions trading rules
The European Union has agreed to suspend its rules that require airlines flying to and from airports in the EU to pay for their carbon emissions.
The rules had been unpopular with countries outside Europe such as the US, China and India.
Climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said she had proposed “stopping the clock for one year”.
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Read more: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/12/aircraft-carbon-emissions-tax-crashes-and-burns/
The EU block likes to pretend they are powerful, but the reality is the EU is falling behind in terms of their importance to global trade. Decades of high taxes and business unfriendly domestic policies have taken their toll.
Like any bully the EU has a track record of rapidly backing down when anyone stands up to them.
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I suspect the major effect of this will be another US news cycle with the theme: “Trump is a disaster”. Wait a few days and see if it emerges on MSM and late night talk shows.
We, as a country, fart in EU’s general direction.
Maybe that will cause some actual climate change!
Nice post Anthony. Nothing like some red meat for Europhobes and isolationists
Typical remoaner BS. EU is not Europe. Your comment makes no sense. Were Foot, Benn, Shore, Castle and even Corbyn ‘Europhobes and isolationists’ in 1975?
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/a-lesson-from-the-1975-referendum/
“remoaner”? make sense?
Definition please.
Nothing like some red meat for Europhobes and isolationists
Anth*ny is simply reporting what’s in the public news. Unknown if it’s serious or just virtue-signaling, but it is insulting to suggest free-trade should be tied to some hair-brained scheme of controlling the weather.
Mirror all such actions with their own medicine. There goes the French wine.
Australia and New Zealand will be beneficiaries, Asia Pacific Region economic growth area.
NATO is becoming an unworkable defense agreement in practice.
Lie.
Threatening existing trade treaties would be dropped, THAT would be serious business, serious commitment to Paris Agreement (whatever you think of this one). But they don’t.
They only threaten “future” treaties, that is, TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). This one is under “pause” forever, and always will, as too many Europeans just hate Trade, USA (not just Trump, this TTIP was already massively protested under Obama) and want NO trade with it.
So they just have rather use some petty excuse putting the blame on Trump, instead of admitting they just cannot reach agreement between themselves.
Options, for any country in the world:
1. Unilaterally declare your country to be free trade and thus can import stuff from anywhere in the world without import duty of any kind. Result is your citizens and businesses can choose the best/cheapest/best value product,commodity, etc of anything and therefore have MORE money left over for other things, research,better standard of living.
2. Join some group such as WTO and agree to abide by their rules whatever they are with probably very little chance of changing said rules as you will have small % voting power.
3. Negotiate mutually agreeable trade deals with individual countries and/or blocks like EU. These will ALWAYS involve a degree of protectionism somewhere typically one sided.
Morally and intellectually option 1. seems to shine out above all else. The more countries that go down this route the better it is and eventually you may get a snowball effect.
Terminate NAFTA if any member remains a signor in the Paris Climate Agreement.
The article from the EU by Dave Keating said that Trump was elected on an anti-free trade platform. Where the h-ll is that in the 2016 Republican platform? The only thing I saw was a section on having a “winning” free trade policy and renegotiating trade agreements to provide more favorable terms for the United States.
How is that different than any other nation’s trade policy? Another out-and-out lie by the EU.
There may be a micron of truth in their nonsense. The union rank and file did not show up at the polls for Hillary in the industrial/motor vehicle states that Hillary didn’t bother to visit a single time and Trump mentioned NAFTA a few times. Okay, we’ll compromise and give them half a micron of truth which is about all they ever deserve in Le Muddville.
What was Hillary going to tell them anyway?
“Your jobs are soon gone. They belong in China. There is nothing I can do about it (there is nothing I want to do about it anyway). You can still wash dishes, at least until immigrants replace you. You care about your jobs and about your backward thinking industry which proves that you are Luddites but you are uneducated so you probably don’t know what a Luddite is. If you were forward thinkers you would make solar panels which are made in China anyway because keeping an industrial job in a Western country is backward thinking.
In the long run our great liberal intellectuals have a plan to choose the President with the popular vote in order to make your vote count less which would be better for you because liberal elites are forward thinkers so they know that your backward industry is doomed and solar and wind is the future. My liberal buddies know about energy use and climate because they have law degrees. You don’t so don’t even bother.
Remember, anyone who doesn’t vote for me is sexist. You must be racist too; those of you who voted for Barack Obama did so by accident. They are still racist.
You are so backward, you probably don’t understand why I am most qualified. Only my liberal buddies do.”
As the Israelis just paraphrased today…. ‘This is not the time to bark, this is the time to bite.’
So what became of the carbon tax push on American airlines flying to or over any of the EU?
Asia Pacific Region is the economic growth area now and the UK has been seeking realignment with Commonwealth of Nations members, the US of course has influence in the region.
Meanwhile EU member countries economies are being crushed by the AGW hoax and related agendas.
From the article: “When Trump was elected on an anti-free-trade platform in 2016”
Trump was elected on a FAIR-trade platform. Trump is not against free trade, he just wants the trade to be fair to the United States. Running huge trade deficits with other nations is not fair to the United States.
Its high time the EU in Brussels is dismantled. It was shoved down the throats of the people and we need to get rid of them asap.
EU may be dismantling itself. The same people who explained that as a matter of principes they do not intervene in states internal politics (even when an allegedly “illegal” referendum is suppressed with extremely excessive violence) decided to punish Poland for the extreme anti democratic “crime” of … democratically choosing its own judges, as many other democratic nations have always done.
Removing Poland’s voting rights would probably make very few practical difference as the France-Germany block tends to pre-decide most decisions (in a typically monopolistic way, funny for a block that gives such importance to anti monopoly issues), but as a symbolic point, it’s devastating. The EU national story (the EU wants to be a nation, like the US) is predicated on the idea it’s free, peaceful alliance of democratic nations, not an imperialistic bully. (At least not with its own members, bullying ex-Yugoslavia countries seems OK.)
I have always felt that EU is so out of touch with most humble people, so inconsistent in its narrations, so inept in it’s propaganda, it may be practically undone by the time brexit is implemented.
My oh my next election Germany outs the globalists and the Paris Pledge deflates like a popped
birthday balloon . The conferences will however continue .
Just another snippet – which country in the EU do you think breaks the most EU rules..?
Yep – its Germany….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_European_Union
I did not know the EU is on a suicidal mission. In 2015 the US was its No 1 trading partner, with $370 billion exports and $247 billion imports (in 2016 it was $416 billion vs. $270 billion). So sure, it is a bad deal, the EU (who else?) is expected to put an end to it ASAP.
The entire issue is utterly ridiculous.
The EU looks more and more like a suicide pact.
The EU has become a toothless construct. High energy prices, high transportation costs, endless red tape and regulations have become a mill stone around the neck of trade and business. As a result the EU is no longer competative. The other aspect is import taxes. The consumer is not served by the EU and they very well know it. The time for this house of cards has come.
Anyone got a picture of the US fag with dead children bleeding on it while NRA gives millions to to Republicans who are prepared to sell their souls for the cash ?
Don’t like it eh ? Enraged? Ready to respond with obscenities?
Maybe that how you should feel when you misuse the flags of other nations and communities to make a sick jokes with the flag of the EU.
If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.
The NRA is a malignant cancerr. Every mass shooting and the subsequent inaction is a reminder of that.
Bite. Nose. Spite. Face.