HN Reader

Here we see the world just moving on from the insanity that is the US.

Everyone else doesn’t actually need to deal with the mafia like tactics and uncertainty.

Very sad day for the EU during an already very sad period.

First, this vote by the commission is a mockery of the EU own rule. The commission is not competent for comprehensive deal mixing trade and cooperation and splitting the deal like they have done at behest of Germany is a disgrace and likely illegal. I hope and fully expect the ECJ to strike this down.

Second the content of the deal is completely outdated. No mirror close while the EU tightened their own rules so much is insane. The alleged safe guards are completely insuffisant. We are basically saying it's ok for a foreign sellers to do things we ban here. It's even more insane when you consider that it's Bayer actually selling the banned pesticides and they are amongst the companies benefiting the most from the deal.

Third the market we are supposedly opening to Europe have already moved on. European automakers already have factories in the Mercosur so exports won't move. The only things which will change is how expensive it is to ship parts so the deal is basically lining up the margins of auto companies with no local job increase. That leaves pharmaceutical and industrial machineries but even there Europe is quickly losing ground to China and India. The commission knows that and pivoted into pretending the deal is actually about securing source of raw materials like lithium from Argentina but ironically the main consumers of this lithium in Europe will be Chinese companies factories in Hungary. We are destroying the livelihood of our farmers, a fully local part of the economy, to help China.

Fourth the deal affects various countries in a massively unequal way with clear losers and counties which incorrectly think they win. I can't stop noticing that it's always the same country blocking common investments, blocking transfers, using the common currency and internal devaluation to prop up its exports at the expense of its neighbors, killing common procurement to try to favour its own industrial base, currently trying to destroy our space industry so moneys go to its startup. So much for the supposed solidarity I guess. There is very little union in the so called European Union.

“Free Trade” is just nice naming veneer for ongoing exploitation of the lower classes.

Rich countries get richer, poor countries stay poor.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/08/french-farmers... has more (but still very little) background on why EU farmers dislike the deal: because it opens EU to agricultural imports, but doesn't require those imports to meet the same standards EU farmers are held to. The Guardian article mentions allowing imports of crops grown with pesticides that are banned in the EU. Basically sabotaging EU farming.

There are probably other double standards, but I can only speculate, because the quality of reporting is abysmal. The Guardian gives scant specifics, DW gives none, just meaningless rhetoric like "bases that are too outdated" or "hails 'milestone' agreement".