Glyn Ford says the era of Unequal Treaties is back
Almost paralleling the reign of Victoria (1837-1901) was China’s Era of Unequal Treaties, which saw the Qing dynasty subject to the United Kingdom and Russia, France and the United States” rapacious depredations. The “lesser fleas” joined in with Sweden and Belgium, Prussia and Portugal, biting at the edges. A cowardly, craven and hapless Chinese leadership saw the country forced to pay huge financial reparations for foolishly resisting the import of British opium from India, open up its ports for unfettered Western trade and cede or lease territories to Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Germany. Alongside, there were imposed concessions of sovereignty, allowing Christian missionaries to roam free and grant extraterritoriality to Western citizens so that their crimes were tried in their own cushy courts rather than those of China. The country was reduced to semi-colonial status.
Under Trump 2, the boot is on the other foot as the United Kingdom and the EU now pander and kowtow before him as he wipes his feet on their prostrate bodies. On trade, the EU pre-emptively surrendered before a shot was fired. The “Treaty of Versailles” style deal sees Brussels submit to the arbitrary imposition of 15% tariffs across the vast majority of export goods, improved access for the US’s agri-capital companies to the European Market and the re-introduction of a Truck system – banned for employers in Britain in 1831 – where they agree to buy €700 billion of overpriced Liquid Natural Gas from the US rather than cheaper alternative energy and commit to invest €550 billion in the States by 2029.
All contributing together to hobble Europe’s industry with the drip-drip destruction of its competitiveness; with the prices for its energy a multiple of that paid domestically by American competitors, a weakening of its ability to invest domestically with funds drained off across the Atlantic. American exports to the EU face no tariffs, while goods going the other way pay 15%. In total, it’s the construction of a semi-permeable financial membrane that allows the osmosis to tens of billions in taxes, investments and profit to readily flow from Europe to the US with nothing going the other way.
This is not all. Europe’s soft power is being compromised. As the world’s biggest market, the EU was the Regulatory Superpower. The standards it set were exported globally. Multinationals could neither afford to absent themselves from the EU market, nor did they want the added cost of bespoke production to varying standards across multiple circumscriptions. The result was manufacturing under EU rules. Trump’s Second Front is to threaten Brussels’ regulatory dominance by demanding that the EU remoulds its legislation to fit America’s industrial behemoths like Apple and Google. Apple wants a revision of the Digital Markets Act (2022) designed to prevent big tech companies from abusing dominant market positions at the expense of smaller businesses and consumers, after Google in September was fined €2.95 billion for abusing its position by favouring its own products in online ads to the detriment of rivals. Trump also seeks a downgrading of the Green Deal, with, for example, a postponement of the Anti-deforestation Regulation. Von der Leyen – getting her capitulation in first – is already planning a batch of Regulation “simplification” proposals that pander to Trump and the European Parliament’s National Revolutionaries. In a last echo of China, Trump wants Greenland.
What about Britain? The UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal (EPD) is just as askew and asymmetric an agreement as that with the EU. True, our tithe to the US Treasury is 10% rather than 15%, but there are signs the Government is prepared to elide its digital and online regulations closer to those of Washington than Brussels as compensation, while the EPD forcing the UK to abolish the 19% tariff on bioethanol has already resulted in hundreds of job losses in Hull as the local plant was forced to close. The steel tariff is stuck at 25% and Washington has already, post the EPD, unilaterally enlarged its footprint by adding a further 400 categories of goods with steel components. Britain’s “bonus” is our selection as Trump’s “trusty” in Europe.
The UK’s relationship is partly paid in kind as we cleave close to US foreign policy. Keir Starmer’s sacking of Peter Mandelson as the UK Ambassador to the United States on 9/11 for his conniving, toady-like relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein rather begs the question as to why he was still in post in the first place.
No mention of the option of rejoining the EU Single Market or building a fresh relationship with Brussels. His contentious central allegation was that while post-Brexit Britain was being squeezed between the EU, China and the US, it was only America that was capable of competing with China, arguing consequently that if we do not want America First to be America alone, we have to submit to a strategic depth in our relationship to not be reduced to fair-weather friends. Thus, we have to be willing to fight in the Indo-Pacific. Capability was not the issue; rather, it’s the willingness to unquestionably saddle up and ride astride with Washington come what may. A UK reduced to Trump’s Judas goat leading Europe’s NATO behind us.
Brussels and Von der Leyen may also be craven and cowardly in facing up to Trump, but they have seen him naked. The UK seems determined to admire the Emperor’s new clothes as he takes us to the cleaners.