Viewpoints
Opinion

The European Union’s Agreement With the United States Is Positive and Realistic

Everyone wins with deals that create a fairer and more open trade framework than what existed in 2024.
The European Union’s Agreement With the United States Is Positive and Realistic
President Donald Trump shakes hands with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen following their meeting in Turnberry, Scotland on July 27, 2025.Brendan Smialowski/AFP
Daniel Lacalle
|Updated:
0:00
Commentary

The agreements the United States has signed with its main trading partners are both positive and realistic. They demonstrate that, in 2024, the world was not a trade paradise of spontaneous cooperation among free-market companies as per David Ricardo’s ideal, but rather a statist system filled with barriers against U.S. businesses and political efforts to pick winners and losers.

Daniel Lacalle
Daniel Lacalle
Author
Daniel Lacalle, Ph.D., is chief economist at hedge fund Tressis and author of the bestselling books “Freedom or Equality” (2020), “Escape from the Central Bank Trap” (2017), “The Energy World Is Flat”​ (2015), and “Life in the Financial Markets.”