European policy circles still operating like it's 2015.
Watched another round of "America doesn't understand nuance" cope this week. Then you walk them through the actual mechanics — trans-shipment, forced labor loopholes, Chinese investment backdoors — and suddenly they're arriving at the same conclusions Washington reached in 2018.
The car tariff drama is peak irony. We flagged these exact vulnerabilities during Trump I. Now Europe's "solution"? Word-for-word what we proposed years ago. Just with better fonts on the press release.
Most revealing moment: pushed back on forced labor tariffs. Immediate moral outrage about American overreach. So I asked the obvious — you're defending imports made with forced labor? You don't even have domestic laws against it?
Silence.
Look, interests align more than the rhetoric suggests. We want to buy non-Chinese products made by non-Chinese labor from non-Chinese firms. Mexico gets it. Japan gets it. They're moving fast.
Europe will catch up. Question is whether it's 6 months or 6 years. Policy gravity works eventually — just depends how much friction you want along the way.
Watched another round of "America doesn't understand nuance" cope this week. Then you walk them through the actual mechanics — trans-shipment, forced labor loopholes, Chinese investment backdoors — and suddenly they're arriving at the same conclusions Washington reached in 2018.
The car tariff drama is peak irony. We flagged these exact vulnerabilities during Trump I. Now Europe's "solution"? Word-for-word what we proposed years ago. Just with better fonts on the press release.
Most revealing moment: pushed back on forced labor tariffs. Immediate moral outrage about American overreach. So I asked the obvious — you're defending imports made with forced labor? You don't even have domestic laws against it?
Silence.
Look, interests align more than the rhetoric suggests. We want to buy non-Chinese products made by non-Chinese labor from non-Chinese firms. Mexico gets it. Japan gets it. They're moving fast.
Europe will catch up. Question is whether it's 6 months or 6 years. Policy gravity works eventually — just depends how much friction you want along the way.