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Comment by propman | Hacker News Reader

Smart move IF we weren’t doing the same to Europe and Canada at the same time. Europe is completely unreliable in terms of a united front against China, everyone has failed on that. They delay, delay, empty promises almost as bad as China so we don’t need them per say but we don’t want to get retaliation from them either.

And Canada is awesome.

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Well, the US leadership has made it quite clear that US is only in for themselfes and not a reliable partner anymore, at least in the current presidency.

China already is a very important trading partner for the EU, so it makes sense to look east if relationships to the west deteriorate.

Apart from practical reasons, I actually think facing off China on their extremely anti-comptetitive and protectionist behaviour is long overdue and something the EU should do as well.

"the US leadership has made it quite clear that US is only in for themselves" as opposed to EU always looking out for US :)?

The old world order was the US would be mostly fair to its allies, and in return everyone would turn a blind eye as it pursued whatever it wanted in the third world. Because the west would never seriously challenge the US it never had to be concerned about the UN or any international body that constrains the actions of most nations. The US is the most powerful single country but alone against a united world it would not have nearly the same freedom of movement it has now.

You see the "blind eye" thing for EU is complain loudly and do nothing and thats not specifically related to US either. Russia invades a country "voice concern" Russia shoots down a plain with many EU citizens now it's "deep concern" while still laundering money for russian politicians and oligarchs etc. So at some point none cares any more if EU voices "concern", "deep concern" or "very deep concern".

The tariffs on Canada make sense. The Chinese were selling their steel to “Canadian” companies who were then selling it to the US. Canadian government is fairly toothless when it comes to managing China partly because we’re non-confrontational and partly because they are propping up our GDP growth by investing in our real estate markets.

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