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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   32208 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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It's hard to see that 90 days is sufficient to conclude trade deals with most of the countries in the world (TPP took over 8 years to conclude), it's just a panic button.

That depends on whether or not you believe that long trade negotiations occur as a means of negotiating trade, or as a means of furnishing the sinecures of lazy trade negotiator bureaucrats.

We saw the same thing with Brexit and the length of negotiations were all BS there too. In no possible universe is [https://www.gbnews.com/politics/brexit-news-eu-laws-bananas-retained-eu-law “How bendy can a banana be”] a legitimate negotiating question.

That depends on whether or not you believe that long trade negotiations occur as a means of negotiating trade, or as a means of furnishing the sinecures of lazy trade negotiator bureaucrats.

One of the arguments made against reciprocal tariffs is that it was simply too difficult to calculate - given the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of items and so many countries, and the non-tariff barriers that the Trump admin themselves pointed out - by April.

I would be much more confident in the "lazy trade negotiator bureaucrats trying to get paid" explanation rather than "Trump panic button" if Trump had already outperformed the naysayers by putting out a reciprocal tariff scheme that didn't boil down to a simple formula.

“How bendy can a banana be” a legitimate negotiating question.

Well it sort of obviously is a negotiating question. If you want free access to European markets some degree of harmonisation has to occur - whether one party thinks regulation X is pointless isn't really material, the question is are they willing to endanger a trade deal to ditch the bendy bananas regulation. And so the inevitable horse trading.

whether one party thinks regulation X is pointless isn't really material, the question is are they willing to endanger a trade deal to ditch the bendy bananas regulation

Considering what said bendy bananas regulation actually says, it's a good example of something the EU should insist on having as it's all about labeling standards, ie. not trying to pass subpar produce as prime quality.

Why is a bendy banana subpar?

I think the bendy ones are supposed o be higher quality.

No, it's exactly as ridiculous as the memes say. I grew up under a lack of EU regulations on the matter, and for some mysterious reason there was no deluge of mislabeled poor quality food (in fact I'm prettty sure the general quality was better).

Produce seems like the perfect example of a place where regulation is not needed. Lidl’s general guarantee plus consumers’ discernment should be enough without Brussels needing to mandate a standard banana

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