Plus Donald Trump concludes new agreements with important business partners from the United States and more the signing of such an agreement with Canada by the deadline of 1is August seems to become unlikely so much American requests are arbitrarily high and the concessions, nonexistent.
We all want Canada to complete a trade agreement-even imperfect-with the United States by the end of the week, which would have the merit of inducing a little predictability in the troubled economic context that we have suffered since the entry according to 47e American president, just six months ago.
But even with an agreement in your pocket, nothing will ever shelter us from new turpitudes of the tenant’s tenant.
The trade agreement that the European Union (EU) with the United States has just concluded is a fine example showing how the Trump negotiation method is more of the steamroller than the desire to get the best for both parties.
The 27 EU member countries will now pay a customs duty of 15 % on almost all the products they will export to the United States and will also have to invest 600 billion US in the United States and buy for US 750 billion in hydrocarbon and nuclear fuels over the next years.
What did the EU get these immense dealerships in return? “The United States has made no concessions,” admitted the president of the European Commission on Sunday, Ursula von der Leyen.
The European manager even was delighted to have been able to agree with her American partner and thus avoid European countries to be imposed on a customs right of 30 % on all their export products from 1is August, as Donald Trump had threatened.
The understanding between the EU and the United States was very critical of the politicians of many countries, including the French Prime Minister, François Bayrou, who wrote that Europe had submitted to Trump’s will and that she had just lived a “dark day”.
Jacques Attali, economist and advisor to ex-socialist president François Mitterrand, was even more scathing in saying that “this agreement is madness”.
The threat to which the president of the European Commission wanted to escape is that which has now hovered over Canada since Donald Trump said that he could impose new customs duties of 35 % on certain Canadian imports if an agreement does not take place by 1is august.
Last Friday, he added by deploring that Canada did not give him a lot of luck and that in the absence of an agreement, Canada could be ordered to pay customs duties to eternal life.
The United States-US agreement, a prelude?
Certainly, the trade agreement that has just taken place between the European Union and the United States appears to be a prelude to what could occur here, that is to say an agreement which must satisfy the greed of Donald Trump at all costs, no matter what it costs in Canada.
In other words, that’s it for him and nothing for the other, except that the satisfaction of escaping the threat of being imposed on customs duties of 35 % on more products.
Trump was much more aggressive to the EU than it was with the United Kingdom, with which he agreed on general customs duties of 10 %, when it will be 15 % for the 27 European countries.
Trump has even agreed to reduce customs duties on imports of British cars in return from a greater opening of the English market to American agricultural products. More American cows against more British cars, as Angelo Katsoras, geopolitical analyst at the National Bank, recently summed up.
For some time now, Donald Trump seems to have developed an obsession with supply management that supervises key sectors in the Canadian agricultural industry.
Will he absolutely want to create new breaches in the Canadian system to allow American producers-however largely subsidized-to have more access to our market? We will see how far his stubbornness will lead him by Friday.
Mark Carney was reassuring on Monday by declaring that Canada was negotiating intensely with the United States, while specifying that the country was not going to sign any agreement (see tab 3). And he has already admitted that if understanding there was, it was not necessarily going to end the existing customs duties such as those on steel, aluminum, cars and soon copper.
This is what the European Union has just accepted, whose countries that are producers of steel and aluminum will continue to pay customs duties of 50 % on its exports to the United States.
This is already a defeat in itself, since the conclusion of a commercial agreement should normally put an end to the taxation of all customs duties, whether punitive or compensatory, because a good commercial relationship is based first and foremost on clear rules and not changing according to the mood of an individual.