That squeaking and rattling sound

[Suff]

Was the sound of the toys being thrown out of the Pram by EU leaders and EU NATO representatives.

Why? Well it seems that Trump backed up his campaign rhetoric with more plain talking and even his musing as to who will be next to leave the EU club.

The outpouring of angst and ire is quite amusing. They thought he would do the political thing and once he had taken office he would row back on his promises and just give the minimum. Sadly they need to be hit with the clue stick. Trump is _NOT_ a politician as they know the animal and he does not like the EU or the way that EU NATO countries use and abuse the NATO umbrella that the US provides.

For the EU it's comeuppance time. They have spent 2 decades penalising and going after US companies who are world leaders. Why? Because also ran companies (mainly EU), complained that they could not compete.

I must admit this probably has some strong ramifications for the current Google case going through the Commission right now. For once the US has a businessman as President. Someone who doesn't give a damn about the "relationship" with the EU and could care less if the US trades with them.

I wonder when the EU "officials" will realise that lots of "little men" standing on the shoulders of other "little men" do not a big man make? They have relied on a very uneven balance of US support for two full generations instead of ensuring their own security and spending the money that is needed to ensure their own security.

Lots of large ginger tabby's flying over bird fences right now...

I must admit that the total flabbergasted expressions of the EU "organs" is pasting a rather large smile on my face. It gets bigger every time their nose gets out of joint. Even if it is about as irreverent as Derek and Clive's "Jump".

Honestly Trump is worth two terms at this rate.

[TheOstrich]

These were comments made in that meeting with a Brit, Michael Gove. The test of whether Trump is going to be primarily a politician or a businessman will be what he actually says in conversation to Juncker, Merkel et al ...

Nevertheless, what he said concerning trade deals, NATO etc. gives Theresa May some quite potent ammunition in dealing with the forthcoming EU negotiations. He also said that the EU is effectively nothing more than a vehicle for Germany and he's quite right - Merkel proved that over the migration debacle.

I must confess I was quietly pleased with the Trump interview. He has the potential to be a far better President for relations with the UK than "back-of-the-queue" Obama ever was.

[Workingman]

In some respects Trump is the complete bonehead, but in other respects he is only saying what millions of us have been prevented from saying due to PC and diplomacy, and the liberal elite do not like it one bit. Whether he will be a good, bad or indifferent POTUS remains to be seen, but he is a refreshing change, if nothing else.

[Suff]

Whether he will be a good, bad or indifferent POTUS remains to be seen, but he is a refreshing change, if nothing else.

He certainly is. However my political antennae are twitching and the noises from the liberal elite sound like the beginnings of making a case for impeachment. Given that they were unable to derail the inauguration.

Until then I'd like to see the Grauniad slapped round the head and told to get it right. We can enter into negotiations but we can't sign until we have left the EU. If Trump holds on long enough to sign in April 2019, then we're good. However as Ossie says, it gives May a very strong hand.

It's been quite interesting reading over the last two days. Germany's biggest single export is cars at €150bn a year give or take a few billion. The largest market for those cars is the UK. The second largest is the US. I also hadn't realised that all BMW X5 and X6 series models are made in South Carolina; it punted out nearly half a million of them in 2016 for export to 14 countries. That plant is the largest BMW plant in the world now.

It may wind up that if there is a hard Brexit, BMW may need to manufacture in the UK or the US to keep it's profit margins intact. Interesting world isn't it...

Lots of wonderful little "truths" falling out of the back and forth.

[Workingman]

Err, excuse me.

In 2014 Spartanberg, S.C. produced 364,000 vehicles of which 70% were exported to 140 countries outside of the US, not 14. Only ~100.000 were sold in the US market. It makes X3, 4, 5 and 6 models, not exclusively, at Spartanberg, and that is not their largest plant, Dingolfing is, with Regensberg a close third. Its penetration in overseas (US) markets from S.C. is, on average, ~1,800 vehicles per annum, per market.

However, BMW is a world player in the automotive market and could, if it wanted to, produce vehicles in any country prepared to give it a production site. And like many other global enterprises it is not now tied to its country of origin, or the UK or US or the EU or Zimbabwe...

Ain't those wonderful truths revealing?

[Suff]

There I was with a smart reply and the site bombed and I copied over my clipboard.... <sigh>

Have a look at the BMW response to Trump's administration. Spartanberg, S.C. produced ~440k cars in 2016 and expansion since 2014 has made it their largest factory in the world.

I amuse myself with thoughts of BMW having to shift manufacturing to the US in order to sell to the UK without punitive taxes, using a US/UK trade deal.... Gives me a chuckle from time to time. Already if you want an X series other than X3, you have to get it from the US.

[cromwell]

I don't know so much about trade, though I can sympathise with the desire to get manufacturing jobs back in the USA (and the UK). What is wrong with protecting the jobs of your own people?

As far as NATO goes it maintained the peace in Europe for a long time, but now it seems to have become more aggressive, moving troops and missiles into Europe and putting pressure on Russia. If Trump gets along better with Putin and we need fewer troops in Europe, wouldn't that be a good thing?

Plus both Obama and trump have pointed out that some NATO members have been getting a free rde. They haven't been spending the percentage of GDP on their NATO commitments that they are supposed to. Why should America keep paying for the defence of Europe when some European countries will not pay for the defence of Europe?

Then of course we have our old chum M. Jean-Claude Juncker and his desire for an EU army. How does that sit with membership of NATO? Is it a replacement for NATO? Who knows, I've not seen much on the detail of the proposals.One thing does seem clear though, an EU army will mean that someone has to pay for the EU army, which will probably mean that Germany has to pay for it!

[Suff]

There is, of course, another side to this story of NATO and the EU army. When the USSR took over the Eastern European countries and forged them into the Warsaw Pact, NATO was a seriously unhappy bunny, locating nuclear weapons in Western Europe and locating massive forces there too.

Now the Warsaw Pact is defunct, the countries are mainly part of NATO and the EU is talking about having an “ARMY” funded by a country which twice attacked Russia at the cost of more than 30 million lives.

How would you feel looking in on the other side of this? When noises were being made about moving the Ukraine into the EU and NATO. But the Ukraine has a lot of Russian citizens who don’t want to be other than Russian citizens and just happened to be located there when the USSR fell.

Can anyone, honestly, tell me that the US would have been more restrained than Putin and Russia are at the moment? Because I honestly don’t believe it. To a Russian, hearing a German demanding that the entirety of the EU (~500m without the UK), must give up sovereignty, subsume itself in the EU and feed into one of the largest military organisations in the world; is not music to their ears.

If you take a step back and listen to the rhetoric of the EU over the last decade and put it into another context, it paints an entirely different picture of East-West relations.