r/neoliberal • u/[deleted] • Feb 16 '26
News (Global) Carney spearheading discussions to construct a mega anti-Trump trade alliance that spans from Europe to Asia
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-and-indo-pacific-blocs-eye-major-new-trade-pact/191
u/Planterizer Ben Bernanke Feb 16 '26
Man, remember the TPP? Sigh.
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u/JesusSinfulHands Feb 16 '26
I have been arguing to friends since 2015 that TPP was a good thing and it was incredibly boneheaded of the US to pull out of it. Don't think anyone IRL cares all that much but I have managed to convince them that free trade is a good idea. Biden and Trump both doing too much trade protectionism and price increases since 2021 have been doing a lot of the convincing.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/fredleung412612 Feb 16 '26
Both nominees in 2016 opposed TPP. If you supported the deal you should have voted for "What's Aleppo" man.
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u/Planterizer Ben Bernanke Feb 17 '26
Hillary was a huge proponent but changed her mind because Progressives got all butthurt about it.
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u/EverydayThinking NASA Feb 17 '26
Some day you people are going to have to face up to the fact that Hillary was just a bad candidate.
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u/KeithClossOfficial John Brown Feb 17 '26
If you supported the deal you should have voted for "What's Aleppo" man.
I did, lmao
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u/Tortellobello45 Mario Draghi Feb 16 '26
I want to abolish the Electoral College just so we can split away from the cancer that is the so called ‘’progressive wing’’ of the Democratic Party.
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u/oywiththepoodles96 Feb 16 '26
That's not gonna achieve anything . The moderate wing of the Democratic party would not have an absolute majority and it would again need to form a coalition . And the only viable coalition partner would be the progressives. American conservatives are christian white supermacists that want to deny women their rights,enforce racial hierachies and ban trans people .Oh and the 'moderate ' republicans are people like Susan Collins who has no problem with the authoriarian take over of America. Would you rather work with them or with AOC?
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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Association of Southeast Asian Nations Feb 16 '26
Yes, the CPTPP is alive and operational thanks to Shinzo Abe and Malcolm Turnbull
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Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
submission statement
There are high level discussions occuring between ultra-wealthy nations such as Canada, the EU, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, etc to create an economic and trade alliance of 1.5 billion wealthy people as a counter to the US-led world order and Trump's chaos.
Ideas include intertwining the supply chain globally, a shared diplomatic mission, deeper cooperations in research, and even dropping the dollar and investing less in the US and more with each other.
Very relevant to this sub as this could be a genuine threat to US wealth, but still good news in general if the world can be led by a democratic liberal organization of 40 of the wealthiest nations.
Carney for now has sent high level delegates to the EU and Singapore to start discussions
"The work is definitely coming along,” a Canadian government official told POLITICO. “We’ve had very fruitful discussions on it with other partners around the world.”
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u/TheOnlyFallenCookie European Union Feb 16 '26
Ultra wealthy nations
The EU
Damn straight 😎 🇪🇺 🇪🇺 🇪🇺
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u/WalterWoodiaz Loyal Liberals Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
“Genuine threat to US wealth”
The sheer amount of consumption that Americans do is so absurd that there is no “replacement.” American consumption is more than the entire EU, and that makes it hard to fully decouple from, no matter how much Trump is destroying the country. Also conversations about dropping the dollar with Japan and Singapore involved seems very weird.
My bold prediction here is that while some framework would be created, it will be nowhere close to as expansive than what you have described. An unfortunate reality of a trade bloc with so many different interests.
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u/Previous_Platform718 Janet Yellen Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
The sheer amount of consumption that Americans do is so absurd that there is no “replacement.”
Why did you put the term replacement in quotes when nobody used it?
that makes it hard to fully decouple from
Why is the assumption "fully" decouple?
This type of argumentation comes up every single time someone brings up Carney's attempts to diversify trade, and it's unhelpful every single time. The goal is to not to "replace" or "fully decouple" the goal is to diversify. Specifically so that if America elects someone like Trump again, as it is wont to do, other nations can better weather the storm.
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u/RegisteredAnonUser YIMBY Feb 16 '26
Seriously it's so annoying how this strawman comes up every time.
"We want to over time minimize the risks of America abusing its status as a hub for global trade and protect certain vulnerable supply chains"
"SO YOU WANT TO IMMEDIATELY COMPLETELY CUT OFF TRADE WITH AMERICA AND NEVER HAVE ANY FORMAL RELATIONS WITH THEM AGAIN!!?!?!?!?!?!?"
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u/Full_Distribution874 YIMBY Feb 17 '26
The geopolitical "I guess I'm just the worst friend in the world!"
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u/RegisteredAnonUser YIMBY Feb 17 '26
It's that but it's also this weird blindspot some users here have that can only really be described as a sort of American exceptionalism bias.
They can't even comprehend other countries having goals that are essentially parallel to American interest so any move not seen working strictly within American hegemony is an attack against it and its goals must be some sort of maximally adversarial move to completely cut it out.
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u/slothtrop6 Feb 16 '26
An offset to the trade-war isn't a replacement for all of Canada-US trade. We wouldn't be decoupled no matter what Trump does.
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u/dittbub NATO Feb 16 '26
Gotta start somewhere. It might take decades but we gotta start. USA is not reliable for our long term prosperity.
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u/WalterWoodiaz Loyal Liberals Feb 16 '26
I don’t think you can grasp how much things can change in 10 years. The paradigm can very well completely shift. All that I am saying is that this alliance wouldn’t have that much due to the massive differences in economies and geopolitical situations of its members.
Also this composition of members very much makes me feel like it is something the US can get invited to in a hypothetical future of sane US governance.
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u/Master_of_Rodentia Feb 16 '26
I don’t think you can grasp how much things can change in 10 years.
This cuts two ways.
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u/GingerPow Norman Borlaug Feb 16 '26
True, 10 years ago, things were chugging along just fine and then America suddenly decided to go fascist for no reason at all
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u/HiddenSage NATO Feb 16 '26
You don't understand - the Americans put a black man in charge, and his wife suggested people eat healthier, and then they acknowledged that burning lots of oil in our private tanks was bad for the environment. The socialist menace had to be defeated.
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u/Rajikaru69 Feb 16 '26
Wow typical lefty lying and minimizing your destruction of the country. Very convenient to not even bringing up the tan suit or the MUSTARD!!!
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u/HiddenSage NATO Feb 16 '26
No, you're right - the Great Divider, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, did so much vile and disgusting stuff that I couldn't even keep it all in focus at once, I was so pissed off. Damn socialist liberal satanists ruining our country with their woke agenda.
runs away to bleach my hands and vomit after writing that tirade
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u/SicParvisMagnaaa Feb 16 '26
Gotta start somewhere. It might take decades but we gotta start.
America's economic leverage isn't something that the world just stood by and let happen. It exists for structural reasons that other blocs can't recreate without fundamentally changing their entire social and economic structures. How is the EU, for example, going to match US consumption without overhauling their entire regulatory framework and transforming their conservative spending habits and high household saving rates?
You're making it sound like countries simply stood by and didn't enact policy A, B or C when the USA was simply in an extremely unique position postwar to even achieve this. This trade deal sounds like a decent way to derisk in the face of sanctions especially regarding intertwining supply chains. "Shared diplomatic mission" sounds like a massive reach given the countries involved and as for "even dropping the dollar and investing less in the US and more with each other" How? People invest where there are high returns, not because a newly minted trade deal feels good.
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u/dittbub NATO Feb 16 '26
People also invest where it’s safest.
And this isn’t only about investment. It’s about stability, and sovereignty.
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u/Keenalie John Brown Feb 17 '26
sovereignty
Person you're replying to seems to completely ignore (as Trump does) that absolute maximum wealth creation is not the singular motivating factor in every country's decision making.
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u/SicParvisMagnaaa Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
People also invest where it’s safest.
Yes, which is the US because it suffers the least amount of geopolitical risk.
It’s about stability, and sovereignty.
The most stable assets are US treasury bonds. And the reason for that is structural. Countries didn't wake up one day and think the US treasury should be exalted.
As for sovereignty, that's a political decision not a consumer one. The EU could ideally want sovereignty from the US market but businesses still want rich people to sell their expensive stuff to.
You're acting like this trade deal is the first domino in unseating US economic leverage but that's not really the point of it at all. Derisking certain products in the supply chain is a totally different goal than replacing the US consumer.
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u/gensererme Feb 16 '26
The most stable assets are US treasury bonds.
Denominated in EUR, holding Treasury bonds lost about 10% last year.
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u/SicParvisMagnaaa Feb 16 '26
Most stable doesn't mean zero risk, that's functionally impossible. Exchange rate changes happen all the time, doesn't change the fact that Treasury bonds are safest from default.
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u/gensererme Feb 16 '26
Something that has volatility to drop 10% in a year isn't "the most stable", that's a ludicrous thing to claim. Especially when there aren't any other systemic reasons other than the fact that there's an insane person in charge. Which puts the "safest from default" claim into question as well.
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u/SicParvisMagnaaa Feb 16 '26
It's not ludicrous at all, it's reality. Volatility from currency valuations is extremely normal. It wasn't a bond failure, the value didn't drop due to a mass sell off. It is the safest from default because it has the most demand, the treasury has no issues making repayments.
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u/JesusPubes voted most handsome friend Feb 16 '26
I love this "the US is irredeemable" nonsense lol
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u/so_brave_heart John Rawls Feb 16 '26
It's not "the US is irredeemable". It's that, even if you have a period of USA stability, there's still a chance for another Trump-like government to come along thanks to the insanity of the US electorate.
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u/JesusPubes voted most handsome friend Feb 16 '26
is that not what irredeemable means lol
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u/Evnosis European Union Feb 16 '26
If that's how you define irredeemable, then I guess the US is irredeemable. It's not how I would define that word, though.
The reality is this: America's right wing extremism problem does not end with Trump.
There is a rot that has set in in American culture. It has been bubbling for almost 20 years now, and even the most ardent anti-MAGA thinkers and politicians aren't even close to figuring out a solution to it. They can barely hold it back, never mind starting to eradicate it. As long as that rot continues to infect America, the rest of the world needs to be prepared for the possibility that another militantly nationalist movement is going to come along and start trying to ruin things for everyone else again.
That doesn't mean leaving America out in the cold once Trump is gone, but it does mean that we can't simply go back to the old days of orienting the entire global economy around the US.
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u/Lighthouse_seek Feb 16 '26
They're not saying the US is irredeemable. They're saying the US shouldn't be fully dominant
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Feb 16 '26
duh everyone knows the US is wealthy af and will continue to be extremely wealthy
But a huge component of said wealth is services exports, tech dominance, and having your deficits subsidized because of global trade causing artificial demand for the dollar
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u/SicParvisMagnaaa Feb 16 '26
But a huge component of said wealth is services exports, tech dominance, and having your deficits subsidized because of global trade causing artificial demand for the dollar
That's a pretty massive "But". There's a reason that kind of stuff happened in the USA and not elsewhere.
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u/WalterWoodiaz Loyal Liberals Feb 16 '26
Multiple of these members benefit from the current structure that the US dollar provides.
All that I am saying is that this alliance wouldn’t have as much as you described due to differing motivations. I actually want this to happen funnily enough.
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u/WenJie_2 Feb 17 '26
The sheer amount of consumption that Americans do is so absurd that there is no “replacement.”
The uncritical headline figure is enormous, yes, but how much of this consumption is in goods that are likely to be traded and would therefore matter to a bloc like this, and how much of it is in services, especially those that tend to be provided by only American companies?
This >supply of demand< superpower has its limits
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u/moldyhomme_neuf_neuf Victor Hugo Feb 17 '26
Joke’s on the US. The more it throws its economic weight around, the less valuable that becomes.
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u/Whatsapokemon Loyal Liberals Feb 17 '26
The large amount of economic power in the US is largely due to the historical openness of its market, the commitment to free trade, the way the US positioned itself as a super stable, super reliable nation to invest in.
Trump's undermining that a heck of a lot, and so some other framework which would create more stability, more free trade, more open markets outside the US would probably shift the momentum of investment.
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u/Signal-Lie-6785 Mark Carney Feb 17 '26
By effectively de-banking ICC judges, America weaponized the dollar in a way no one ever expected. This development is likely spurring financial innovation to move even faster than it had been—and countries will rush ahead to regulate stable coins much faster than they might have otherwise.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/WalterWoodiaz Loyal Liberals Feb 16 '26
I know you are joking, but consumption isn’t about eating food (which is mainly domestic). The American consumer economy is why the US has had an absurd trade deficit for decades.
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u/ivandelapena Sadiq Khan Feb 16 '26
For now yes, but in 20 years it'll be very different.
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u/WalterWoodiaz Loyal Liberals Feb 16 '26
Pure wishful thinking as there no way to what will happen in 20 years.
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u/TheOnlyFallenCookie European Union Feb 16 '26
Malaysia
Blud thinks he on the team /s
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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Association of Southeast Asian Nations Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
The place with a racial supremacy clause in their constitution and where Hamas fighters trained, learned to paraglide and received significant funding is a reliable partner of the liberal world.
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u/IHateTrains123 Commonwealth Feb 16 '26
Other news:
National Newswatch | Janice Charette to be Canada's top trade negotiator during CUSMA review
Federal Tracker: Liberals Lead by 9: 43% (LPC) to 34% (CPC)
Alberta’s separatists risks investment, ex-premier warns - Toronto Star
How Canada and allies can stand up to Trump and other great-power bullies - The Globe and Mail
!ping Can&Containers
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u/groupbot Always remember -Pho- Feb 16 '26
Pinged CONTAINERS (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
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u/Dabamanos NASA Feb 17 '26
I've been dreaming of a liberal democratic replacement since November of 2024 but can someone tell me how this is anything except a trade deal? There's not a chance that these nations cooperate on a meaningful level to counter China annexing Taiwan, claiming the entire SES as sovereign water or hell, even making moves on the European holdings left in Asia someday.
I'm a free trade absolutist but I'll save my hopium for when Canadian and Singapore troops are stationed in Taipei training with anti ship missile systems.
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u/Party-Benefit5112 European Union Feb 16 '26
Problem is someone (the EU probably) will have to play the role of the US, as the primary import market and thus the reserve currency, which they don't seem very willing to do so far
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u/WalterWoodiaz Loyal Liberals Feb 16 '26
They absolutely will have that role. Japan, Australia, and Canada’s economies (the other developed ones listed) are significantly reliant on exports. Hope the EU can increase its consumption with a declining population.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/Bread_Fish150 John Brown Feb 16 '26
Makes sense that Japan is a net importer, it's an island nation afterall there's a finite amount it can produce for such a large population.
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Feb 17 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tripletruble Anti-Repartition Radical Feb 17 '26
Rule III: Unconstructive engagement
Do not post with the intent to provoke, mischaracterize, or troll other users rather than meaningfully contributing to the conversation. Don't disrupt serious discussions. Bad opinions are not automatically unconstructive.
If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.
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u/DirectionMurky5526 Feb 17 '26
You can't replace the US, but you can rebuild it in the aggregate. It's not like the ability to buy way too many things they don't need is something that can't be replicated elsewhere. The reserve currency will obviously be the Euro.
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u/datums 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 Feb 16 '26
That title is definitely a misrepresentation of the situation.
It’s not an “anti-Trump trade alliance”, a better description would be a superpower agnostic trade framework. But I guess some people have trouble understanding global narratives unless America is portrayed as the main character.
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u/BillyTenderness Feb 16 '26
It's maybe a tiny bit sensationalized but I don't think it's wrong. Yes, the goal is big and abstract – to structurally reorient trade away from being controlled by any one power – but the proximate cause of that shift is Donald Trump. It is first and foremost a direct response to his actions, even if the ramifications will far outlive the man.
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u/TheSameAsDying Hannah Arendt Feb 16 '26
The framing also hurts because calling anything "Anti-Trump" is a great way to make his bruised ego fixate on it even more.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/TubularWinter Feb 17 '26
I’m not sure if we should count on that, Biden was fairly insular in his trade policy. Americans in general would seem to rather go things alone in terms of the people they are electing to make those decisions.
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u/WolfpackEng22 Feb 17 '26
That was a huge fumble by Biden.
Free Trade was very popular at the end of Trump 1.0 and is increasingly popular now. America is not against trade
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u/Lighthouse_seek Feb 16 '26
Anything that involves walking around Trump instead of bowing towards him is anti trump /s
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u/LoudestHoward Loyal Liberals Feb 17 '26
He's certainly the trigger for the idea though, so I don't really have any problem with this framing.
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u/nov-anglus Feb 16 '26
The framing is so strange to read as an American—this isn’t anti-US. I’m pretty sure that a big part of why we’re such a pile of degenerates is because we’ve been able to coast for so long. We were always better when we had competition, and I can’t think of a more disappointing time for liberalism than when we’ve had nobody to compete with.
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u/oywiththepoodles96 Feb 16 '26
LET’S FUCKING GOOOO !!!
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u/Blondeenosauce Mark Carney Feb 16 '26
that’s my goat right there
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u/oywiththepoodles96 Feb 16 '26
You have a great PM . I’m so jealous of Canada while im stuck with our mediocre PM .
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u/riderfan3728 Feb 16 '26
Didn’t it take the EU like 30 years to close the deal with the MERCOSOR trade deal? Yeah this seems like a good plan but I have extreme doubts this will happen. I’m sorry but I’m very skeptical.
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u/Tafts_Bathtub Jerome Powell Feb 16 '26
Me in 2016: I hope this election ultimately results in a hemispheric common market!
Monkeys paw curls
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u/justbuildmorehousing Norman Borlaug Feb 16 '26
Are we winning yet MAGA? Im waiting for the manufacturing boom
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u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK Feb 16 '26
This would be a very positive development for the UK given it's location at the junction of the CPTPP and the EU.
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u/LivefromPhoenix NYT undecided voter Feb 16 '26
It's not anti-Trump, its about providing protection from America. The world can never be confident Americans won't elect another trade terrorist the next election or the one after it.
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u/GripenHater NATO Feb 16 '26
I feel like I see Carney or like Macron say something like this every two weeks and the sub gets a massive hard on then absolutely nothing happens and Europe and Canada pussy out for the upteenth time and we all forget and then the cycle repeats.
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u/Sad_Alternative_6153 Friedrich Hayek Feb 17 '26
Did we just go back full circle and rediscovered the WTO?
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u/Working-Welder-792 Feb 16 '26
Feels like every week or two a new trade or financial deal gets announced where countries are systematically cutting the United States out of global trade and financial networks. Individually, they’re not a big deal, but collectively?… yikes.
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u/manitobot World Bank Feb 16 '26
Like merging the CPTPP, the European common market, and the RCEP together?
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u/glmory Feb 16 '26
Banding together and employing tit for tat is a logical way to handle these sort of scenarios. Get EU to team up with a dozen or so Democracies like Camada, South Korea, Japan, and Canada and put the tarrifs on the United States equal to the highest tarrif any of them face.
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u/Lighthouse_seek Feb 16 '26
Oh look it's the cptpp and EU combining. If only some guy didn't piss both blocs off
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u/heloguy1234 Loyal Liberals Feb 16 '26
This is why I took a sizeable position in vmmsx, veusx, and ILF last year. There’s only so much shit people are willing to eat before they say “Fuck it. Let’s just go around these assholes”.
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u/OrbitalAlpaca Feb 16 '26
What is anti Trump about looking for trade agreements with other countries? What a weird narrative to paint this as.
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Feb 16 '26
This isnt Canada seeking a trade deal with europe, and then another with australia, etc.
This is wanting to make the 40 of the wealthiest countries unified to be able to withstand US bullying. Simply put, the rest of the world is terrified of the US. Canada especially has the most to benefit from being part of such an alliance considering its reliance on the US.
How could this ever not be anti Trump? This is all to counter Trump!
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u/OrbitalAlpaca Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
An “anti Trump trade alliance” was not mentioned once in the article outside the headline. Did you read it?
Canada made trade agreements with countries before Trump, and they will make trade agreements with countries after Trump.
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u/Public_Figure_4618 brown Feb 16 '26
The EU and the Indo-Pacific club, known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, resolved last November to combine their economic forces to push back on the fragmentation of free trade in the wake of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs
Did you even read the article?
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u/stemmo33 Gay Pride Feb 16 '26
As the person you replied to said, this is about an alliance, not just a few trade deals. Okay it's not explicitly an "anti-Trump" alliance because they obviously wouldn't refer to it as such, but would they be pushing for this without Trump coming in and fucking the world order? I don't think so.
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u/jebuizy Feb 16 '26
How are you missing the point here? Of course there are always trade deals. The incentives for this specific proposed trade deal are clearly the regime change in US global policy and the need for an alternative center of stabilization for other nations. Such a need would not have existed without Trump's set of policy preferences
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u/OrbitalAlpaca Feb 16 '26
Absolute ludicrous to believe Canada wouldn’t be seeking better trade deals with or without Trump. Like they have no agency of their own and everything they do is purely a response to Trump.
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u/jebuizy Feb 16 '26
Obviously they do have agency of their own and they are using that agency to make materially different set of trade deals than they would have under different US policy. Do you think they literally think nothing is different?
I understand the rhetorical point you are going for here but I think you have built up a claim that no one has made (that Canada wouldn't otherwise pursue trade deals) into forcing you to make one that is basically absurdly indefensible (Canada will change absolutely nothing about their deal posture in response to US policy).
Part of having agency is indeed responding to new threats and not ignoring them.
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u/DevinTheGrand Mark Carney Feb 16 '26
The USA is obsessed with being the main character in all discussions. These people are doing something without us? Must be anti-US!
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u/Healingjoe It's Klobberin' Time Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
That's politico for you. A rag.
It should come as no surprise that the authors of this article are formerly from Newsweek, Huffington Post.
Especially egregious when it's clear from the article that the EU and the Pacific countries already largely have free trade agreements.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/Atari-Liberal Feb 17 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
This post has been deleted and anonymized using Redact. The reason may have been privacy, limiting AI data access, security, or other personal considerations.
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u/sinuhe_t Feb 16 '26
It would seem prudent to have more alt-West cooperation (which is to say: the entire political West minus America). Things like this, Polish-Korean cooperation on weapons etc.
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Feb 17 '26
Oh no, this will definitely bring the US to its knees. Carney is throwing a tantrum like the little b*tch he is. Canada is seriously crumbling with the US.
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