Can someone explain to me why Labour are making noises about having a closer trade relationship with the EU just as Trump is saddling up to hit the EU with gigantic tariffs which he hasn't yet said will be applied to the UK? I don't understand this thinking at all, surely just staying where we are with a tariff free trade deal with the EU and no formal trade deal with the US (and no punitive tariff regime) is the best possible move. Anything that antagonises Trump by moving closer to the EU and results in similar tariffs to Canada being applied to our US trade and then being involved in retaliatory ones will result in a recession regardless of what minute gains there might be in having a a closer relationship to the EU.
Like it or not, Trump is the only game in town right now and by luck or by design we've managed to escape his immediate ire, why trade that away for no gain?
I think Trump will also hit us with tariffs regardless. We have a trade surplus with US so he will think we are taking advantage of him. Plus Musk hates the UK and Starmer.
I'd be fine with the UK govt hosting lots of meetings at his golf club though. Much cheaper than abandoning a closer trading relationship with the EU!
Seeing as Cooper intends to make possession of any AI image generation tool illegal here wasn't that our comp adv over the EU ?
Yet Starmer wants us to be an AI powerhouse, effectively negating copyright and patent law.
Can someone explain to me why Labour are making noises about having a closer trade relationship with the EU just as Trump is saddling up to hit the EU with gigantic tariffs which he hasn't yet said will be applied to the UK? I don't understand this thinking at all, surely just staying where we are with a tariff free trade deal with the EU and no formal trade deal with the US (and no punitive tariff regime) is the best possible move. Anything that antagonises Trump by moving closer to the EU and results in similar tariffs to Canada being applied to our US trade and then being involved in retaliatory ones will result in a recession regardless of what minute gains there might be in having a a closer relationship to the EU.
Like it or not, Trump is the only game in town right now and by luck or by design we've managed to escape his immediate ire, why trade that away for no gain?
I think Trump will also hit us with tariffs regardless. We have a trade surplus with US so he will think we are taking advantage of him. Plus Musk hates the UK and Starmer.
I'd be fine with the UK govt hosting lots of meetings at his golf club though. Much cheaper than abandoning a closer trading relationship with the EU!
I thought we now have a trade deficit don't we? Probably fortunately in this instance if we do.
Both countries record a small trade surplus because of varying measurement criteria. I would say the reality falls in between and US/UK goods trade is basically balanced. We do have a very large services surplus with the US, however, that is mostly due to US companies placing their non-US global/European/EMEA centres in the UK. The real services surplus is a lot smaller without this.
I don't get this thinking. A huge international trade war, particularly if the EU gets involved, is surely going to smash the UK economy regardless of whether we are directly targeted. This hiding under the bed strategy isn't going to work as Trump picks off each country one by one.
(and his line about "working something out" with the UK is pure gangster. We're next.)
I'm increasingly worried we'll look back on this in the same way we do Crimea/Salisbury. Should've stood up the **** earlier when he hit our Canadian friends and threatened our Danish ones.
The tariffs are insane; everyone knows that if Congress voted in secret, Senate would be 95-5 against. This whole situation is based on the ignorance of one man, and the lack of fortitude among Congress to push back. It will harm all four countries. So what should Canada do? 1/x.. https://x.com/Afinetheorem/status/1885830894365131235
The analysis that a trade war will harm Canada disproportionally is probably correct, but the political pressures make their response inevitable anyway.
I saw a graph somewhere that these tariffs and their response are thought to add 0.5% of inflation to the US but more like 2-3% for Canada and Mexico. 0.5% probably is small enough that it doesn't really affect the Trump that much...
But politically when prices go up in Canada everyone is going to blame Trump, whereas when prices go up in the US people will also blame Trump.
And psychologically people notice the prices that rise a lot, and ignore the prices that don't. I'm assuming within that average 0.5% extra inflation there will be some items people buy that will have much bigger price increases
I think this is the graph. The same article estimates a $200 billion hit to US GDP and $100 billion to Canadian GDP over Trumps term.
South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY. It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention. A massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum, is happening for all to see. The United States won’t stand for it, we will act. Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!
Much as I dislike Donald Trump’s Terrible Tariffs, he’s absolutely right on South Africa. Fuck South Africa
I confess I am lost.
Trump, if he stands for anything, stands for American isolation and an end to the 'US as world police'.
So why does he give a fuck about this other country?
Because his primary motivation is being a massive racist?
I'm unsure Trump is a racist in the traditional sense. I think he's more like a narcissistic mafia don whose only interests beyond himself are his family.
But some of the people around him? Quite possibly, yes.
Also, don't discount a massive amount of misogyny in the new regime. Especially from the likes of Musk, who just wants women to be baby-breeding machines.
Trump was forced to reach out of court settlements for excluding black people from renting apartments as far back as the 1st half of the 1970s.
Check out the full page ad he took out in the Daily News in 1989 calling for the death penalty to be brought back for the (innocent black) Central Park 5.
Or his reaction to having a black man as his president - all that birther shit.
There are loads of other examples of "textbook racism". It's just he says so much other bollocks that it's possible to lose track. That's part of how he operates - flood everywhere with so much shit that people don't stop to identify the individual turds.
The thing is, I only really started taking notice of Trump after about 2010. Before that, he was someone who was vaguely about in American culture; a sort-of jokey figure who ran businesses poorly. I did not investigate him or his background much because he was a joke. It'd be like taking Al Capone seriously.
South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY. It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention. A massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum, is happening for all to see. The United States won’t stand for it, we will act. Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!
Much as I dislike Donald Trump’s Terrible Tariffs, he’s absolutely right on South Africa. Fuck South Africa
I confess I am lost.
Trump, if he stands for anything, stands for American isolation and an end to the 'US as world police'.
So why does he give a fuck about this other country?
Because his primary motivation is being a massive racist?
I'm unsure Trump is a racist in the traditional sense. I think he's more like a narcissistic mafia don whose only interests beyond himself are his family.
But some of the people around him? Quite possibly, yes.
Also, don't discount a massive amount of misogyny in the new regime. Especially from the likes of Musk, who just wants women to be baby-breeding machines.
Trump was forced to reach out of court settlements for excluding black people from renting apartments as far back as the 1st half of the 1970s.
Check out the full page ad he took out in the Daily News in 1989 calling for the death penalty to be brought back for the (innocent black) Central Park 5.
Or his reaction to having a black man as his president - all that birther shit.
There are loads of other examples of "textbook racism". It's just he says so much other bollocks that it's possible to lose track. That's part of how he operates - flood everywhere with so much shit that people don't stop to identify the individual turds.
The thing is, I only really started taking notice of Trump after about 2010. Before that, he was someone who was vaguely about in American culture; a sort-of jokey figure who ran businesses poorly. I did not investigate him or his background much because he was a joke. It'd be like taking Al Capone seriously.
There were suggestions over the weekend that the senior management got marched out of the building after refusing to co-operate with anyone in Trump’s team. It sounds like the plan is to merge USAID back into the State Department, starting with a zero-based budget.
There were suggestions over the weekend that the senior management got marched out of the building after refusing to co-operate with anyone in Trump’s team. It sounds like the plan is to merge USAID back into the State Department, starting with a zero-based budget.
What we should do. Except the Foreign Office is equally crap.
The tariffs are insane; everyone knows that if Congress voted in secret, Senate would be 95-5 against. This whole situation is based on the ignorance of one man, and the lack of fortitude among Congress to push back. It will harm all four countries. So what should Canada do? 1/x.. https://x.com/Afinetheorem/status/1885830894365131235
The analysis that a trade war will harm Canada disproportionally is probably correct, but the political pressures make their response inevitable anyway.
I saw a graph somewhere that these tariffs and their response are thought to add 0.5% of inflation to the US but more like 2-3% for Canada and Mexico. 0.5% probably is small enough that it doesn't really affect the Trump that much...
The US is the much larger economy. So 70% of exports from Canada and Mexico are going to the US, but 70% of us oil and gas (Canada’s biggest export), is domestically produced in the US. It’s actually a big problem for those two smaller countries.
I think, as much as you can think much about anything with a maverick like Trump around, that he’s looking for leverage in other areas such as immigration control or regulatory changes.
The extra Chinese tariffs make more sense from an economic point of view.
There’s a rumour around that Canada is considering closing their airspace to US aircraft transiting, which would make flights from London to LA about two hours longer.
A shame they can’t charge them a transit fee. I see one of the Canadian provinces is already going to do that for tolls on the road for US trucks.
Judging from social media a good proportion of Canadians are now hating up on their southern neighbour
Canadians didn’t particularly like Trump before this week, but they definitely don’t now.
I can understand tariffs on Mexico, they’re a much lower-cost and lower-regulation economy, that’s exporting good American jobs and sending back unskilled immigrants and drugs. But hitting on Canada does seem a little out of place. Trudeau is on the way out, and the likely winner of the spring election is pretty conservative by Canadian standards.
There is also the issue of the Canadian Parliament being shut down at the moment, so Trudeau might find it difficult to actually do much about the tariffs in the short term. He doesn’t have the level of executive power that his counterpart south of the border possesses.
And the fentanyl giveaway programme that Trump (rightly) gets angry about is going to be dismantled by the CPC anyway. All he's doing I'd giving the Liberal party a chance at clinging on and maintaining their disaster policies. Targeting Canada is such an insane policy and to me proves that whatever else Trump might or might not do, he's going senile just in a different way to Biden.
There is zero comparison with Biden. What Trump's already done in a couple of weeks is damaging America and the west much more than Biden managed in four years. And shits LOL at it because he's "owning the libs".
Worse, Biden was surrounded by people who were often vaguely competent. Trump is surrounded by people who are willing to see the country and the world burn - just so long as they make money.
Maybe it’s all a big insider trading play, and having shorted the markets they will switch positions just before Trump switches policy
There were suggestions over the weekend that the senior management got marched out of the building after refusing to co-operate with anyone in Trump’s team. It sounds like the plan is to merge USAID back into the State Department, starting with a zero-based budget.
What we should do. Except the Foreign Office is equally crap.
The ODA was merged into the FO 4 years ago.
What has happened since is that about 1/3 of the Overseas Aid budget, which should be being spent on preventing the things which result in people coming here as economic migrants, has instead been carpetbagged to be spent on housing them here - whilst the Govt failed to operate the system to send those back who were not entitled to stay.
There were suggestions over the weekend that the senior management got marched out of the building after refusing to co-operate with anyone in Trump’s team. It sounds like the plan is to merge USAID back into the State Department, starting with a zero-based budget.
What we should do. Except the Foreign Office is equally crap.
There were suggestions over the weekend that the senior management got marched out of the building after refusing to co-operate with anyone in Trump’s team. It sounds like the plan is to merge USAID back into the State Department, starting with a zero-based budget.
What we should do. Except the Foreign Office is equally crap.
The ODA was merged into the FO 4 years ago.
What has happened since is that about 1/3 of the Overseas Aid budget, which should be being spent on preventing the things which result in people coming here as economic migrants, has instead been carpetbagged to be spent on housing them here - whilst the Govt failed to operate the system to send those back who were not entitled to stay.
Why are we interfering at all, by "preventing the things which result in people coming here as economic migrants"? Sounds like a new type of colonialism.
There were suggestions over the weekend that the senior management got marched out of the building after refusing to co-operate with anyone in Trump’s team. It sounds like the plan is to merge USAID back into the State Department, starting with a zero-based budget.
You mean that senior management tried to stop Musk's Minions from accessing data that they didn't have security access for?
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(and his line about "working something out" with the UK is pure gangster. We're next.)
I'm increasingly worried we'll look back on this in the same way we do Crimea/Salisbury. Should've stood up the **** earlier when he hit our Canadian friends and threatened our Danish ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQAdT1u63ac
What has happened since is that about 1/3 of the Overseas Aid budget, which should be being spent on preventing the things which result in people coming here as economic migrants, has instead been carpetbagged to be spent on housing them here - whilst the Govt failed to operate the system to send those back who were not entitled to stay.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-aid-fcdo-merger-and-the-move-to-0-5-four-years-on/