Yves here. Below, Andrew Korbyko describes how one sided the new “framework” trade agreement between the EU and US is. He’s not alone in this view.
Some representative Twitter takes:
What was all that talk about “European sovereignty”?
For years, Brussels told us the EU was ending dependence on foreign powers. We heard sermons about “strategic autonomy” and “open but assertive trade”.
The 2025 trade deal is not a negotiation — it’s a capitulation. A 15%… pic.twitter.com/jBx4o0vfc1
— Daniel Foubert 🇫🇷🇵🇱 (@Arrogance_0024) July 28, 2025
The EU has just agreed to what looks like the most idiotic trade deal in history with the US.
The EU pays a flat 15% tarrif and agrees to pay hundreds of billions for the privilege?
It’s a major win for the big Don, and a demonstration of the idiocy of Von Der Liars cabal pic.twitter.com/hWWTi46OKR
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) July 27, 2025
Pathetic. After exempting US multinationals from the global minimum tax, the EU caves in on trade
This type of extorsion never stops and rarely ends well
Our system of international economic relations needs a radical reinvention, urgently
— Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) July 27, 2025
From Thomas Fazi in EU trade deal is a capitulation to America:
On Sunday, the European Union and the United States finalised a trade agreement imposing a 15% tariff on most EU exports to the US — a deal US President Donald Trump triumphantly hailed as “the biggest one of them all”. While the agreement averted an even harsher 30% tariff threatened by Washington, many in Europe are calling it a resounding defeat — or even an unconditional surrender — for the EU.
It’s easy to see why. The 15% tariff on EU goods entering the US is significantly higher than the 10% that Brussels had hoped to negotiate. Meanwhile, as Trump himself boasted, the EU has “opened up their countries at zero tariff” to American exports. Crucially, EU steel and aluminium will continue to face a crushing 50% tariff when sold into the US market.
This asymmetry places European producers at a severe disadvantage, raising costs for strategic industries like automotive, pharmaceuticals and advanced manufacturing — sectors that underpin the EU’s $1.97 trillion transatlantic trade relationship. The so-called “rebalancing” measures clearly tilt the playing field in favour of the US, forcing European economies to absorb higher costs simply to preserve access to American markets.
Even worse, the EU has committed to $600 billion in new US investments, $750 billion in long-term energy purchases and increased procurement of American military hardware. This further deepens Europe’s structural dependency on US energy supplies and military resources.
The political reaction in Europe has been scathing. French Minister Benjamin Haddad labelled the agreement “unbalanced”, noting that while French spirits secured a narrow exemption, the overall terms were deeply unfavourable. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tried to present the deal as a pragmatic compromise to avoid an all-out trade war, but few were convinced. As geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand observed on X:
In exchange for all these concessions and extraction of their wealth the EU gets… nothing. This does not even remotely resemble the type of agreements made by two equal sovereign powers. It rather looks like the type of unequal treaties that colonial powers used to impose in the 19th century — except this time, Europe is on the receiving end.
From Vzglyad via machine translation, in Marine Le Pen explains why the EU-US trade deal is a complete fiasco:
The trade deal reached by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with US President Donald Trump has been a political, economic and moral fiasco, said Marine Le Pen….
She explained that the deal was a political fiasco because the 27-member European Union received less favourable terms than the United Kingdom…
The deal became an economic fiasco because the commission adopted asymmetrical provisions that France, governed by a patriotic executive power, would never have accepted.
“Hundreds of billions of euros of gas, as well as weapons, will have to be imported annually from the United States. This is a capitulation to French industry, to our energy and military sovereignty,” Le Pen continued.
She saw a moral fiasco in the fact that French farmers were once again sacrificed on the altar of industry beyond the Rhine, with conditions obliging Paris to open the single market further to US agricultural products in exchange for lower taxes on German car exports.
From William Murphy in The Great Trade Swindle: How the U.S.-EU “Deal” Exposes the Rot at the Heart of Neoliberalism:
The language of these deals always obscures their true function. “Regulatory alignment” sounds technocratic, but in practice, it means harmonizing standards downward—sacrificing food safety, environmental protections, and workers’ rights on the altar of “competitiveness.” When the White House boasts of “opening markets,” what they’re really celebrating is the erosion of the last remaining barriers that slow capital’s race to the bottom. EU consumers will soon find chlorinated chicken on their supermarket shelves, while U.S. workers face renewed pressure to accept lower wages to “compete” with European precarity. The winners aren’t nations, but shareholders—the same financial elites who have spent generations pitting workers against each other across borders.
What makes this particular swindle so grotesque is its timing. At the precise moment when the climate crisis demands a radical reduction in fossil fuel production, this deal locks in decades of expanded extraction. As inequality reaches Gilded Age extremes, it further enriches the architects of that inequality. And as democratic institutions crumble under the weight of corporate capture, it hands even more power to the unelected trade tribunals where corporations sue governments for daring to regulate them. The mechanism is always the same: take a policy that would be politically toxic if presented honestly—austerity, privatization, ecological vandalism—rebrand it as “innovation” or “partnership,” and let the media chorus sing its praises.
Now to Korybko.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
This outcome places the US on the path of restoring its unipolar hegemony via sequential lopsided trade deals as it likely sets its sights on the Americas next before finally taking on Asia.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed to a framework dealwith the US whereby the EU will be charged 15% tariffs on most imports, commit to purchasing $750 billion in US energy exports, and invest $600 billion into the US economy, some of which will be military purchases. US tariffs on EU steel and aluminum exports will remain at 50% while the EU agreed not to tariff the US at all. The alternative to this lopsided arrangement was for Trump to impose his threatened 30% tariffs by 1 August.
The EU’s macroeconomic strength was greatly weakened over the past 3,5 years as a result of the anti-Russian sanctions that it imposed in solidarity with the US on what had hitherto been its cheapest and most reliable energy supplier. It was therefore already at a critical disadvantage in any prospective trade war. The EU’s failure to reach a major trade deal with China since Trump’s return to office, such as during their most recent summit late last week, made Sunday’s outcome a fait accompli in hindsight.
The end result is that the EU just subordinated itself as the US’ largest-ever vassal state. The US’ 15% tariffs on most imports will reduce EU production and profits, thus making a recession more likely. The bloc’s commitment to purchasing more expensive US energy will become more onerous in that event. Likewise, its pledge to buy more US arms will undermine the “ReArm Europe Plan”, with the combined effect of the aforesaid concessions further ceding the EU’s already reduced sovereignty to the US.
This can in turn embolden the US to press for better terms in its ongoing trade negotiations with others. On the North American front, Trump envisages reasserting the US’ hegemony over Canada and Mexico via economic means, which can enable him to more easily expand “Fortress America” southward. If he succeeds in subordinating Brazil, then everything between it and Mexico will naturally fall in line. This series of deals along with last week’s one with Japan would bolster Trump’s hand with China and India.
He ideally hopes to replicate his Japanese and European successes with those two Asian anchors of BRICS, which together represent around 1/3 of humanity, but it can’t be taken for granted that he will. Trump’s best chance of coercing them into similarly lopsided arrangements requires him placing the US in the most advantageous geo-economic position possible during their talks, ergo the need to rapidly build “Fortress America” via a series of trade deals, and then proving that his tariff threats aren’t bluffs.
“The Sino-Indo Rivalry Will Shape Trump’s Anti-Russian Secondary Sanctions Decision” as explained in the preceding analysis, with this variable and the US’ Kissingerian triangulation policy most significantly determining the future of their trade talks. If he fails, then Trump might not impose 100% tariffs on China and/or India, but some would still be expected. Nevertheless, with Japan, the EU, and likely “Fortress America” on his side, this “Global West” could insulate the US from some of the consequences.
The grand strategic importance of the EU subordinating itself as the US’ largest-ever vassal state is therefore that it places the US on the path of restoring its unipolar hegemony via sequential trade deals as it likely sets its sights on the Americas next before finally taking on Asia. There’s no guarantee that the US will succeed, and a series of lopsided trade deals with major economies would only partially restore US-led unipolarity, but Trump’s moves still represent a possibly existential threat to multipolarity.
