Parliament closes legal loophole to stop excessive Ukrainian chicken imports

This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament. The Parliament agreed on Tuesday to modify the EU-Ukraine trade agreement to curb imports of cheap Ukrainian poultry meat entering the EU using a legal loophole. In a resolution adopted by 444 votes to 128 with 74 abstentions, MEPs called on Ukraine to respect […]

G7: A serious setback hardly avoided in iconic Biarritz

The G7 yearly summits are supposed to strengthen the unity of the world’s wealthiest democracies vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Not anymore, many say, but this time there is one important exception: Iran. The leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and of course the US, met during the weekend in the coastal […]

Trump after marginalizing G20 attacks Europe and China where it hurts, brandishes currency war

Last week’s G20 meeting in Osaka confirmed that the forum’s commonly shared concern about our future on the planet is definitively a thing of the past. Last week, the cacophony at the table of the 20 heads of the largest countries of the world – which first appeared last December in Buenos Aires – became […]

The Sino-American trade conflict may be resolved soon

This newspaper for many months has been closely following the US-China trade conflict (if not at times a full trade war). The current negotiations in Washington D.C. are stuck at the same point as last summer. On August 27 our leading article said: “… Washington’s demands go beyond tariffs”. On October 18 we observed, “The […]

The German automotive industry under the Trump spell

Last week, the White House invited, or better summoned, the leaders of the German automotive industry to Washington D.C., in order to confer on the ‘problem’ of the missive imports of German cars in the US. The American President Donald Trump, in his belligerent line aggressively reshaping the American foreign trade policy with China and […]

The new North America trade deal USMCA punishes German cars

The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is dead. Long live the new United States, Mexico, Canada Agreement (USMCA). The three North American nations will continue trading goods of a value of at least $ 1.2 trillion yearly between them. The US President Donald Trump had termed NAFTA as the worse trade deal his country […]

The Brexit factor in the US-China trade war and other conflicts

Last Friday, the American President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One threatened China with new tariffs on $267 billion of goods heading for the US markets, on top of the $200bn worth of Chinese exports Washington currently is ready to punish with extra levies. The US has already imposed extra tariffs on $50bn of Chinese […]

The US-Mexico trade deal a threat for others, Trump to single out China, Europe

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between US, Mexico and Canada is reborn. It was discarded and denounced by the American President Donald Trump since the first days of his campaign to conquer the White House, and now it returns almost undamaged, just under another name. Last Monday, after more than one year of […]

The EU sides with China against the US; but has Germany capitulated to America?

If billions of EU penalties on American icon companies and U.S. super tariffs on European cars are strong and aggressive trade weapons, then yes the EU and the U.S. are at all out economic war. As in all wars, the difficult or even impossible thing is to predict its end. Unavoidably, there will be victims […]

Germany takes cover from Trump in Eurozone and decides to pay for it

Nobody in Germany doubts it any more that Donald Trump’s America is not a friendly country and market any more, or a guarantor of European security, as was the case for the last 70 years after WWII. To ward off any confusion about that, the German ambassador to the US made a clear statement. Peter […]

France-Germany: Divided in Europe, USA united in…Iran

Last Tuesday afternoon the President of ‘America first’ Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Nuclear non-Proliferation Agreement with Iran. The deal is known as P5+1 and was co-signed by the US, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China. There is no information regarding when the US is to re-introduce its economic sanctions against Iran, and […]

Britain aligns with EU rivaling US on trade and Iran, abandons bilateral ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Last Sunday 29 April, Britain determinedly joined the other two major European Union powers, Germany and France in cautioning the US not to activate its super levies of 25% and 10% on imports of steel and aluminum respectively. Donald Trump, the president of ‘America first’, on 23 March had announced the imposition of the above […]

Trump’s trade wars: Aiming at long term gains for America

Last Friday, President Donald Trump again surprised  the world by imposing new import tariffs on Chinese products of a value of $60 billion and deferring the imposition of import super levies on European Union steel and aluminum for 1st May. In the latter case he also postponed the new tariffs for another six exporting countries […]

Trump systematically upsets global order and trade: Where does this end?

The extra import tariffs Donald Trump, the ‘America first’ President, the US is to impose on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%) imports have provoked a tsunami of reactions and widespread consequences without and even within the country. The European Commission President reacted swiftly and stated the EU is to retaliate with tariffs of an equal […]

Brexit: The Conservative Party drives the UK and Europe to a perilous road

The Tories, the governing party of Britain is falling apart, being deeply divided about the kind of Brexit their country should pursue. It’s not the disastrous political circumstances of Prime Minister Theresa May that blocks the negotiations with the European Union, but the chaos dividing the hard Brexiteers from their colleagues preferring a smooth partition […]

Has the EU economy truly revived from the financial crisis?

Last week the European Commission published a press release regarding EU’s recovery from the financial crisis where it is mentioned that the EU, after 10 years since that start of the crisis, is back to growth because of the EU influential actions. What is more, it was announced yesterday that Germany’s gross domestic product in […]

Europe eyes to replace US as China’s prime foreign partner

Last Tuesday, Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, received in Washington the top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi , in an effort to establish a “regular high-level engagement” with China, after President Donald Trump has practically destroyed the until recently multiple channels of problem solving and interaction between the two super powers. Obviously, Tillerson felt […]

Who is to lose from the 6-month extension of the EU economic sanctions against Russia?

The European Foreign Ministers gathered in Luxembourg two days ago and decided to continue imposing economic sanctions to Russia for another six months. This shows the strong intention of Europe to weaken Russia’s power in Ukraine and thus put a stop on Russia’s imperialistic plans. However, Russia claims these sanctions as “illegal and unfounded” and will fight […]

European Energy Union: Integration of markets and need for in-house energy production

The European Commission (EC) official convened in Brussels two days ago to discuss and decide about the crucial matter of the European Energy Union. The strategy of the implementation of this Union was presented and according to Maros Šefčovič, vice-president of the EC, would be “the biggest energy project since the Coal and Steel Community”. However, […]

Eurozone stagnates after exporting its recession to trading partners

Today Eurostat, the EU statistical service, published its second and more accurate estimate for the euro area and the EU28 Gross National Product during the last quarter of 2013, and confirmed its flash estimate of 14 February when it had reported GDP increases of 0.3% and 0.4% respectively, in relation to the previous quarter. On […]

The Commission neglects the services sector and favours industry

On 22 January the European Commission will present a Communication on an EU wide project, under the grandiose name of “European Industrial Renaissance”. Despite its name, the Communication doesn’t seem to have a strong connection with reality. Even the early pre-announcement of this Communication released on 20 December contains elements of futility. It says “While […]

Who would pay and who is to gain from the EU-US free trade agreement

Challenging the factual reality, that the ‘gains’ from the currently under negotiation EU-US trade agreement would come mainly from deregulation in the fields of health, safety, environment, financial and data security, the European chief negotiator Garcia Bercero insisted that: “the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is not and will not be a deregulation agenda”. […]

Commission’s action against imports from China questioned

According to European Commission’s procedures, the legal dead line for a decision to be taken on the imposition or not of provisional tariffs on European imports of Chinese solar panels, expires tomorrow 5 June. It must be noted however that the EU Trade Spokesman John Clancy, when issuing a Press release on 27 May noted […]

Brazil: A strategic partner for the EU

Brazil is one of the largest democracies of the world, and the offshore oil findings of the past few years, have helped the country become not only self-sufficient in hydrocarbons but also draw millions of its people out of poverty. The country is grouped by OECD to the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China), constituting the […]