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The Wonderful Logic of Nancy Pelosi
Here is a pretty pickle. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has stated that she will fight against any US-UK Free Trade Agreement because of the Irish border. Yet some in the European Union have indicated that they will compel the Irish government to enforce the EU’s border and harden it up to protect the single market from the dangers of American goods in the event of a trans-Atlantic deal.
The great scare is that chicken washed in chlorine or hormone-treated beef might enter the EU single market via Ireland. Like a zombie apocalypse, this would somehow spread as far as the Ukrainian and Turkish borders, infecting all citizens of EU-occupied Europe with American standards. Quelle horreur! The consequences for Europe could be dire; lasagna might actually be made with beef.
So it would seem Speaker Pelosi is fighting on the side of those who want to protect the EU from the ravages of … American products?
Published in General
Seems like whatever gains the Democrats might get from irked farmers mad over the loss of the Chinese market due to Trump’s tariff kerfuffle they’re going to lose, if the same farmers see the Democrats trying to block U.S. goods from entering the European market through Great Britain.
The House can be bypassed by making it a self-executing treaty. Of course that would require some Senate Dems. to get on board.
I don’t understand why strengthening the border in order to prevent American products from being smuggled into the EU via Ireland would lead to breaking the piece.
Well here is what she said:
I doubt much if she cares about the trade. She is saber rattling against Brexit. Of course there will be a trade agreement.
It could be Pelosi’s way of protecting the anti-Brexit narrative. If Brexit actually happens, she might try to deny Britain free trade with the US to make Brexit seem a bad deal… enabling the Left to scream “I told you so” for years after.
Or it could be a threat for Pelosi to use as a bargaining chip in unrelated negotiations with Trump. “Give Democrats this and we will give you a clean Brexit.”
Too bad our meat isn’t inspected and stamped, thus identifying it as coming from the US. Oh wait . . .
That is how I read it too.
Yet having done so for obviously political purposes, isn’t she open to the charge of siding with anti-American EU protectionists?
She is a Democrat. She isn’t open to any charge.
Quite. Nor, in general, have meat-eating Europeans decided to go vegan when visiting the States….
What an interesting problem.
If I recall correctly, the last time the Continental System broke down, Napoleon’s armies marched on Moscow.
How much difference will a US – UK free trade agreement really make?
A few years ago a British trade representative said in a speech I attended that the US has more trade with Britain than with any other country (apparently including China, counting the value of goods going both directions). That probably deserves fact-checking, but I’m too lazy to do so at the moment.
I learned at my former employer that much of the company’s product exported from the US destined for large sections of the world (not just the EU) passed through Britain. I never understood the reasons, but that makes me skeptical that “hardening” the border between Britain and Ireland will really make that much difference in the global flow of goods.
(I have never understood this concern that British trade would evaporate if Britain left the EU. The British have been global traders for hundreds of years. They of all people can figure out how to trade anywhere in the world without the European Union as intermediary.)
Thanks@ctlaw.
I had a vague notion, based on nothing more than memories from when my girlfriend was studying US politics at university, that it was the Senate and not the House that had a say on treaties.
I’d say the link you provided has cleared that up, but it would depend on what was in any US-UK FTA. Perhaps that is why John Bolton floated the idea of sector by sector deals.
This should come as no surprise coming from Nancy Pelosi. The EU is everything she could possibly want or dream of for the United States. A strong centralized government that governs by non-elected officials that impose their will on different states. No matter their own culture, or history that should be confined to a theme park, but all governance must not be left to those without any vision of the collective will.
Depends. Some trade would increase in any event as we drop out of the EU’s external tariff, wine for example has a twelve per cent tariff if memory serves.
Other things are more non-tariff barriers, essentially gold-plated EU regulations written up by our civil service. For example Mahindra can sell tractors in the US but not the EU because of NTBs. A mutual recognition trade deal circumvents a lot of that.
Victor Davis Hanson has a good line on Californian farmers losing market access in the EU, funnily enough I remember the ubiquitous little red boxes of Sun-Maid Raisins in school lunchboxes that have since disappeared from our shelves.
The idea that Ireland will post guards on the border with N. Ireland to check papers of people going to market or pub is an empty threat.
I don’t mind if they strengthen the Irish border if we can strengthen the Mexican border.
I don’t know if that’s true or not. They had border checkpoints at one time not so long ago, and those checkpoints could be activated again. People on both sides wouldn’t like having them again, and I don’t know what it would take to motivate them to put them up again. I’d be interested in what some of our Ricochet members from the Republic of Ireland have to say about it.
Look Out! Nancy has a real winner here! Just think of it – telling voters we must kill American exports, hurt American farmers and kill American jobs because we must kowtow to the EU! It’s just sheer brilliance! We didn’t she think of it before?
The left is all about betrayal; anti-American anything is worth points for Pelosi’s base.
I can’t wait to see the European army march on London after Brexit . . .
Nicky,
The Irish Border Issue is one of the most contemptible pieces of political garbage ever invented by the EU and that is saying something. There is only one motive involved and that is to attempt to reopen a very old wound between Great Britain and the south of Ireland. Happily, I don’t think it will work. I think the Irish are realizing what scum the EU really are. The EU could give a damn about Ireland. This is all a gimmick to gain leverage on Great Britain. Ireland should remember to keep on good terms with the British because the EU will abandon them the moment they are of no use to them anymore. A decent ordinary trade agreement with Great Britain will have many benefits. If they want more perhaps Great Britain will put in a good word with the Americans and they’d write Ireland into a trade agreement. If they are foolish enough to put all their eggs in the EU basket they are sure to be burned.
Regards,
Jim
Ask and you shall receive!
People are worried about anything that disturbs the peace around the border. As you said it wasn’t long ago that there were checkpoints. It’s easy forget now how awful things were up there not much more than 20 years ago. There is a criminal element up there mad for any excuse to cause trouble again.
I have a small beef farm and Brexit has been bad news for me and most farmers in the west. Prices have kept falling except when earlier this year the leave date was extended and they improved. But they’ve been on the floor again for months. Beef farmers have no love of the EU as we are going to be hit by the mercosur deal very badly. Also we don’t particularly like being singled out for ruining the environment with our gassy cows especially when the EU has no problem buying beef produced at the expense of the rainforests of south America.
Ireland in general is very pro EU, so you won’t hear much pro Brexit commentary here. I dislike the EU myself but I don’t think it’s in our interest to leave. Before we joined we were hardly a first world country, it wasn’t until the 90’s that we had some prosperity but the recession in 2008 destroyed our confidence. It wouldn’t take much to knock Ireland down again.
Thanks for your comments.
I am generally pro-Brexit if the EU can’t be made to behave better, but it’s easy for me to say because I don’t have to deal with the complications that might arise in Ireland. The people in Ireland who I know personally are anti-Brexit.
I admit that I don’t quite understand what the 2008 recession did to Irish confidence; some of the reactions to it re the banking industry seemed bizarre and counterproductive to me when I was hearing about them on the news when we were visiting Ireland in 2011.
I hadn’t known about Mercosur or the EU deal, so thanks for that information. On a bicycle ride in the west in 1999 I saw some cattle country as I was letting the wind blow me to Spanish Point, at which point I was able to regain my bearings. (No GPS in those days.) It had reminded me of the cattle country in South Dakota along the Missouri River, though on a smaller scale.
Oh I completely get why the English want to leave the EU and I hope it works to their advantage. They’re coming from a completely different history to us though. But I don’t want to see Britain fail.
The Mercosur deal blatantly shows how little regard the EU has for Ireland despite all their fine words and assurances. There are some mutterings of Irexit but they are treated as cranks and right wing reactionaries. The MSM is firmly progressive as is the political establishment. Fine Gael seems to be following the Democrat playbook and so they had a great welcome for Pelosi a few months ago. I’m glad to say that some of our elected representatives walked out on her address when she celebrated our abortion law.
The recession and the austerity measures that followed turned a lot of lives upside down. I hope I don’t sound melodramatic by saying it marked the end of my youth. I went from being young and single with an enjoyable job and a great social life to being made redundant, spending my 30’s retraining, working poorly paid jobs and taking over the family farm. It’s highly unlikely I’ll ever have my own family as I spent a decade trying to avoid a life of poverty and now I’m in my early 40’s. I was lucky though that at least I had no debt like so many others.
You must have been in Co Clare, it’s unusual in parts of that county, they can outwinter the cattle because of the type of land. Clare is one of the nicest counties.
Echoing the befuddlement. Among the affected parties, it seems to me Ireland and the EU have all the incentive to erect a hard border to protect their market from more competitive goods entering through the UK. So it baffles me that Brexiteers are being criticized for wanting a hard border and risking the peace. What am I missing?
How tense are the communities on the border? What makes people think that a repeat of The Troubles post-Brexit is likely? [Edit: Not rhetorical. Curious to see what answers people have for these questions.]
I don’t think that people are expecting a repeat of the troubles exactly. But I think a lot of people in the years since then came to realise that ‘freedom fighters’ were nothing more than thugs and racketeers. They’re still around but there are also young people who were only children when the ceasefire happened that are out lighting fires and targeting police. I don’t pretend to understand what it’s like up there because thank God I was I born in the republic. But I think it’s significant that a sizeable portion of the republican movement turned away from its Catholic roots in favour of Marxism in the late 60’s early 70’s. It’s not a recipe for lasting peace. I recommended a documentary film here before called I Dolours, it’s worth a watch.
As for the loyalist side, well we always knew those paramilitaries were thugs:-)
I have a new found respect for Ulster protestants though, they are putting up some resistance to abortion being introduced in NI. Unfortunately it puts them at odds with mainland Britain and the republic who both think they are some kind of anachronism.
I see that it’s on Amazon Prime. I’ll watch it, but right now (and probably for the next several days) am using up all my bandwidth on a new backup system.
The tension is not so much at the border, as far as I know. But if you go into cities like Derry or Belfast you’ll find neighborhoods where the antagonistic loyalties are defiantly painted on the walls for everyone to see. Makes some people nervous; they want those troubles to be a thing of the past. (I have a bunch of photos of this sort of thing that I took in Derry last year.)
BTW, I learned that saying Derry rather than Londonderry is a political statement itself. But since my family connections are in the Republic of Ireland, I’ll say Derry. (And by family connections, I do not mean to imply any ancestral connections to Ireland.)
Even during the civil war in the 1920s, the tensions were not so much at any borders, but often between neighbors and relatives. It makes it difficult for an outsider like me to follow the stories.
The elites don’t care. You are a peasant to them. Same on both sides of the pond.
Our own government thinks we are peasants never mind the EU.