Free Republic

EU Trade Commissioner Gives Ground: We’re Willing To Drop Auto Tariffs To Zero (If The US Will Do The Same)(Full Title) President Trump’s hard line on tariffs has won a significant concession from the European Union, at least the promise of one. Trump has been warning all summer that he could add a tariff on automobile imports which would have a significant impact on automakers in Europe (as well as Japan and Mexico). Today the European Union Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the EU was willing to drop all of its existing tariffs on cars and other goods to zero...

The progressive billionaire speculator George Soros has said he will ‘fight back’ against the “dominant ideology” of nationalism, whilst admitting that favoured globalist project the European Union is “on the verge of a breakdown”. Wistfully writing that Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) once ‘epitomised the optimism about the spread of Western-style democracy’ after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Financial Times described the scrutiny the global progressive body is experiencing amidst a wave of patriotism and populism and the ‘wilting’ attraction of the leftist agenda. Soros, alluding to the collapse of the USSR, told the left-liberal newspaper: “It’s déjà...

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a proverb that has long, and apparently mistakenly, been attributed to Bedouins. It’s unfair to them, as it contains the false-dichotomy fallacy. Sometimes the saying is correct, as when the Allies decided in World War II to side with Josef Stalin against Adolf Hitler. Other times, both options are equally bad. This is, however, the way many people insist on reacting to George Soros and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two men currently going toe-to-toe for control of much of the globe’s hearts and minds. You either side with one or...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering joining French President Emmanuel Macron at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week in what could turn into an epic clash of competing world views with U.S. President Donald Trump. Merkel, who has been struggling to put together a government since a German election in September, had been expected to skip the annual gathering of leaders, CEOs, bankers and celebrities in the Swiss Alps for a third straight year. But after clinching a preliminary coalition agreement with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) on Friday, German officials said Merkel could travel...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s trade tsar has no idea what Donald Trump will tell his audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, but she is clear what the EU’s message to the U.S. president will be. America is shooting itself in the foot by withdrawing from global leadership on trade, Cecilia Malmstrom, the 49-year-old Swede who has served as Europe’s trade commissioner for the past three years, told Reuters. Under Malmstrom’s direction, the EU has juggled a dizzying array of trade talks over the past year. In July it clinched a preliminary deal with Japan....

EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström Wednesday (27 November) faced accusations that she has been too soft in her response to the US spying program. The commissioner told deputies in the civil liberties committee that she had closed an inquiry into allegations the US intelligence agency was accessing people’s financial details from the Belgian-based Swift company. …