Why the EU-Japan trade pact is a big deal for Trump

On Thursday, the European Union and Japan announced an agreement on a new trade deal.

Coming just one day before the start of the G-20 meeting in Germany, this deal is also seen as something of a rebuke to the antagonistic trade talk President Donald Trump made a cornerstone of his campaign and which has featured prominently in the early days of his presidency.

On Wednesday, for example, Trump tweeted that the United States has “made some of the worst Trade Deals in world history. [Why] should we continue these deals with countries that do not help us?”

Trump has also repeatedly referenced America’s “bad” or “one-sided” trade deals in the last 18 months.

In a statement, the European Commission called this “the most important bilateral trade agreement ever concluded by the EU.” The Commission added that this deal will “for the first time include a specific commitment to the Paris climate agreement.” Recall that earlier this year Trump said he had withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.

The New York Times writes that this deal is “an act of geopolitical theater,” and indeed it is. But that the EU and Japan reached a deal which had been in the works for years shows that while the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory were seen as signs that something like the “western neoliberal order” was cracking, these proclamations may have been either premature or misguided.

No one leader can change the world economy in one fell swoop

At the risk of making the EU-Japan trade deal something it is not — this deal does not show that everything is “fixed” or that the U.S.’s involvement in foreign affairs is now meaningless — it is worth emphasizing that this is an agreement in principle, a diplomatic show of force about which interests some of the world’s leading powers want to protect: free trade and economic collaboration chief among them.

But against a backdrop of the gnawing sense that something fundamental about the world order we thought we knew having changed in a post-Trump world, this deal is also a reminder no one world leader — U.S. president or otherwise — is likely in one fell swoop to alter international economic alignments.

President Donald Trump (L) with German chancellor Angela Merkel.
President Donald Trump (L) with German chancellor Angela Merkel.

A recent report from Pew Research, for example, found that in the last year support for the EU among many member countries — notably Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands — rose sharply. Additionally, a report from CNN Money this week suggested Mexico and China could be in talks on a new trade deal. Both countries have been the target of perhaps Trump’s strongest rebukes of existing U.S. trade deals.