‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

693 points · 905 comments · hackernj

  1. noir_lord · · focus · HN ↗
    Good, if the middle power democracies don't align/work together they are going to get torn apart in the struggle between the US and China.
    1. krona · · focus · HN ↗
      70% of Canadian exports are to the US. 6% to the EU. Why would e.g. Poland want to enter a trade war with the US on Canada's behalf?
      1. ajuc · · focus · HN ↗
        Polish export to US is about 3% of its total export and import - about 5% of Poland's total import. Not much to lose, honestly. We trade more with Czech Republic.

        Polish export to EU is 74% of its total export and import is about 60% of its total import.

        Economically - whatever's good for EU is good for Poland and US barely matters.

        1. graemep · · focus · HN ↗
          What about the importance of that trade. The US exports a lot of critical things that cannot be supplied from elsewhere. Everyone is heavily reliant on American technology.
          1. krzyk · · focus · HN ↗
            Like what specifically?
            1. graemep · · focus · HN ↗
              The hardware is produced in Asia but American controlled. its still a dependency on being supplied by American companies.

              "Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Just AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.

              1. pyrale · · focus · HN ↗
                That is the kind of discussion where people end up saying "Oh okay, but we can FIRE ZE MISSILES".

                AWS will never willingly stop serving the EU, and oil corps will (unfortunately) never willingly stop selling oil. The US govt could force it, but that would be the end of US-EU relations, economic or otherwise.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.