No. of Recommendations: 5
There's a pretty good chance a mere announcement will do the trick. Sometimes there is no need to actually DO anything, as long as the press articles achieve the result that the counterparties desire, which is in some cases just the press articles. Sometimes the obeisances is not needed, merely the show of obeisance.
I'm quite certain that was the case here. The core US complaints of non-tariff trade barriers weren't addressed at all. The promise to buy $250 million of US energy doesn't appear to be mathematically impossible. Even if it were, the EU commission has no authority or ability to allocate private capital. It is a promise they don't have the ability to keep. Surely the US negotiators knew that. Yet the EU managed to negotiate a better deal than our most important trading partner--Canada--and made no concessions that I'm aware of to get it, other than to sign off on the press release.
