Trump, Tariffs, and the EU’s Dirty Little Secret

Liberty Nation ^ | May 27, 2025 | Mark Angelides

[E. Pluribus Unum]

An existential crisis in the making.

On Sunday (May 25), President Donald Trump granted the European Union a brief lifeline in his quest for reciprocity on tariffs, extending the proposed 50% burden imposition to early July. “Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively,” declared EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shortly after the hiatus was announced. However, her situation, and that of the 27 participating member states, is far more precarious than one might initially assume.

Mighty Markets, Many Tariffs

Without doubt, the EU bloc is a big and valuable trading partner to the United States. Indeed, America purchased more than $600 billion worth of goods and services from the Union in 2024, with members, in return, buying around $370 billion. Princely sums, but uneven – especially considering that there are more potential consumers in the EU market than the US one (450 million souls compared with 347 million).

There’s a unique reason for this trade imbalance, however. Consider that the EU is little more than a protectionist market with multiple layers of government attached. It was founded on the idea that nations with close economic ties would not go to war (as they had done in both 1914 and 1939). As trade became more globalized, the project morphed into a series of mechanisms and institutions that could ultimately impose political will on its members.

In fact, currently, the European Union is considering stripping Hungary of its voting rights within the EU parliament for attempting to implement a law on transparency in its own parliament. This supranational behemoth has gone well beyond scripting rules on single-market access. But therein lies the issue with negotiating a tariff deal with the Trump administration: If the EU is not a protectionist market for its members, it serves no real purpose.

[Repeal The 17th]

So, what is the “Dirty Little Secret “?

[ChessExpert]

It seems that we never had free trade. There have always been tariffs, quotas, and protectionist regulatory barriers.

The article seems to claim that EU countries stay in the EU because they benefit from barriers that lock out goods from the US and elsewhere. If tariffs are equalized, there is no need for the EU. Food for thought, but I’m not sure I agree.

It seems to me that if we settled into a 10% US tariff and a 10% European tariff, individual European nations could benefit from a tariff-free zone within the EU itself.

The US is mostly a tariff free zone for member states. I seem to recall a map showing dairy prices by region that were fixed to benefit the dairy industry in a northern state.

Whether acknowledge or not, I’m sure there are many Europeans who look at the USA and think that a United State of Europe is a good idea. They can hold onto that idea even if tariffs are equalized at 10% between the US and the EU.

[zeestephen]

Re: What is the "Dirty Little Secret?"

Two secrets, actually.

First, the EU imposes Hard Left political restrictions on all members, not just financial and business restrictions.

Second, the EU openly grants business subsidies and exemptions to many large EU industries (like trucks and autos) and to many specialized EU industries like wine.

The EU is a multi-national cartel that deliberately blocks hundreds of billions of dollars of USA goods with EU tariffs and EU regulations.

[Wuli]

“It was founded on the idea that nations with close economic ties would not go to war (as they had done in both 1914 and 1939).”

No it wasn’t. Economic ties, close or strained, were not the causes of either WWI or WWII.

The idea was to economically benefit the individual countries with a many-country-wide “common market” emulating the big single domestic multi-state market like the states of the United States; thus making business and economic exchange easier as a way for the Common Market nations to better prosper. It was a “market” idea to compete with Communist Soviet Union and its slavish Warsaw Pact nations. To that end it did prove itself a better model than the Soviet Union.

The companion fallacy of the idea was that the causes of WWI and WII were rooted in “nationalism”. Not true. WWI’s causes were rooted in competing European empires, empires trying to garner, through colonies, resources for themselves and to keep those resources from rival European empires. What you had leading to WWI were dueling European empires, not excessive or natural nationalism. WWII was not rooted in “German nationalism”. Hitler was trying to create an empire within Europe opposing the global empires of other European states. Imperialism, colonies and their resources, protectionist mercantilism of the empires and military treaties and their failures were at the heart of WWI and WWII - not any sort of natural “nationalism”.

The major detriment is the results from multiple steps from a “free trade” Common Market between sovereign states into a political entity attempting to nullify states’ sovereignty and establish centralized control that continually tries to reach into more and aspects of government overall.

If the people of the EU don’t wake up their children will find themselves living in vassal states of an “EU” resembling more and more the Soviet Union the Common Market originators claimed they sought to be most different from.

All of this has been unnecessary for an objective of avoiding war among the individual states of western Europe. They had already achieved the main ingredients in their own post-WWII natural nationalism within each of them. Letting each make their own internal rules to succeed and prosper as they see fit, was no cause for tensions leading to military confrontation. Freedom meant letting others define what freedom meant to them and not making the differences into a point of contention. Peace was more prosperous than war. That was not a refutation of “nationalism”. It did reject imperialism and the aggression it produced.