European Union

Um, and it seems like the whole world is, actually.

Uh, as the US-Canada trade war appears far from over, that is our fault, uh, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Europe this week pushing for a, quote, "unique alliance between Canada and the European Union." He's pressing for 10 EU countries who have yet to ratify the trade deal with Canada to move forward.

Kalshi puts the odds at 18% of the US and Canada finalizing their trade deal by November 1st.

Uh, that matters.

...

NATO and the EU and, uh, men dressing up and going into women's spaces, uh, and women's sports, uh, if that's left, well, that ain't me.

As you know, you and I are both socialists of the old-fashioned vintage, for which I'm perfectly sure there's still a market.

Big thanks to you, Christopher.

Kathryn will be doing the business next week.

Just to, uh, also, don't underestimate this, this Carney thing with the EU, by the way, overnight.

So Canada's been invited to be the first associate member of the EU.

So in other words, they're going to be a member of the EU, and this is v-very much a play by Carney to get away from Trump, of course, obviously.

But I note yesterday that Australia's looking at something similar, and I just wonder whether this becomes-- the EU becomes truly global if they start branching out into subcategor- I mean, the problem is you can counteract it by saying, "Who the hell wants to be part of the EU?" Twenty-seven nations, half of them don't agree on anything.

You got subsidies and tariffs up the wazoo.

Do you really wanna be a part of that? But it's optics, and so Canada are pleased.

Those for construction and public works companies, as well as for farmers, will remain in place at 20 and 15 cents per liter respectively.

President Emmanuel Macron has called on his government to fully mobilize on securing international fuel supplies and to explore the possibility of greater flexibility in EU regulations.

The moves come in the face of growing public anger across France.

Fishermen have been leading blockades of oil depots in protests that are drawing comparisons to the Yellow Vest movement, which brought the country to a standstill from 2018 to 2020.

But I can see getting substantial market share in some markets if you don't have sufficient charging infrastructure, if you regularly do long journeys and you're worried about charging, if you just want an engine, all those things.

And also in the EU at the moment, they forgot to add tariffs on plug-in hybrids.

They only did it on BEVs.

And so lots of Chinese car makers are thinking, well, we'll just bring some engine-based cars in with massive batteries and avoid the extra tariffs.

Yeah.

The European Union is a name for a collection of countries.

It's not a name for a loud group of people who need to get off a bus to have a wee.

The Tate Gallery is a famous art gallery in London.

And dear Mark, I said we must urgently reimagine our partnerships.

So I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to being the first associate member of the European Union.

By the way, the applause you're hearing, they went on for a while today.

Mark Carney receiving quite the reception in the European Parliament today.

A fast, cheap, administrative route.

In the EU, the reason Daniel's earlier prompt about warranty responsibility landed so hard is that the EU changed the default.

A 2019 directive on consumer sales says the seller is the one who must handle the defect.

You don't get sent to the importer.

The retailer can't pass the inconvenience to the buyer, so the retailer starts pressuring the importer, who pressures the manufacturer.

The person with the least power stops being the person who does the driving.

And the EU backed it with actual enforcement.

Consumer authorities can fine.

Well, it's coming up on 10.06 p.m. in Central European summertime

in Brussels where Mark Carney was earlier today hearing a speech from the President of the European Union where a desire to work with Canada to open the door for associate membership in the EU was floated to much applause and I think has been very enthusiastically interpreted to mean something that it didn't actually mean by much of the world's media.

No, that's my answer because we're not actually doing it.

But it's great to have that appearance of an offer out there.

And maybe it helps us get a better deal when all is said and done, or maybe it doesn't.

But Either way, we're not going to be ceding our autonomy or our sovereignty to Europe.

We're certainly not going to become a full member of the EU.

And there's no such thing as an associate member of the EU.