On 17 July in Tokyo, the European Union will finally sign the JEFTA agreement, Japan Europe Free Trade Agreement, with Japan. A crucial trade agreement for Europe, not only because it is the largest free trade area in the world involving 600 million people but above all representing a third of global GDP.
The decision to make this agreement free of any investment clause certainly marks an important step forward compared to other suspended "European matches" such as CETA with Canada and the infamous TTIP with the United States. But above all the fact that it should not be approved by the national parliaments, as stipulated directly by Brussels, sees in the ratification of the European Parliament next autumn, another arena and a test for a new European path.
NOT ONLY COMMERCIAL WAR BUT ABOVE ALL TECHNOLOGY
The trade war in full swing between China and the United States of America is clearly a clash of the titans and is only the facade of a much broader settling of accounts (from the geopolitical game to that of Treaties such as NATO, NAFTA and TTIP) and which therefore it also goes beyond the new tariffs that Trump is preparing to increase and which have repeatedly fueled debates on the long-term negative effects of a protectionist policy conducted with traditional means that does not take into account a new phase of digital globalization 2.0.
Europe squeezed between two level contenders is unprepared and lost both from a political point of view and not only from a domestic but also a foreign commercial point of view, and finds it difficult to manage politics and planning, political positioning and commercial industrial strategy.
This European bewilderment in the face of situations that represent the future of EU countries such as technological innovation is evident. One of the real pillars of the ongoing trade war is not only the one on the automotive and agricultural sector but above all on the technological positioning for the management of infrastructures which, through 5G, will manage the connections between "devices" with new speeds, the development of the blockchain phenomenon for transactions, and therefore the new corporate and domestic structures. From everyday life with the so-called "Internet of Things" (IoT) that enters everyone's homes up to self-driving cars.
Thus, on the one hand, Trump is trying to stem the advance of the Chinese columns Huawei and ZTE and the Chinese are releasing the availability of their sovereign wealth fund equal to 941 billion US dollars to support the domestic market in the face of necessary devaluations or a more bloody phase of the trade war. Chinese state-owned companies on the one hand and companies backed by the US government and duties on the other, with a trade imbalance at the heart of the conflict and attack strategies now strengthened by actions on the markets and already strong in the divestment of Treasuries from the Chinese, Japanese and Russian side since last April.
EUROPE: THE NATO MEETING AND THE USUAL INCONCLUSIVE AMBIGUITIES
Asian venture capital funds, such as the Japanese-led Vision Fund with Softbank, are no joke. And Daimler, who immediately placed himself among the few European lenders, understood this very well. Over 100 billion available for a technological challenge on a global scale to which the Chinese response of Chinese Merchant Group and the US one of Sequoia Capital were not long in coming.
And the Europeans? Obviously towed by the two giants. So much so that the financier Bollorè, one of the richest men in France, and head of a Group which, starting from the family paper mills, now embraces the energy sector and above all the logistics sector with the acquisition of strategic ports in Africa and signed a few days makes crucial deal with Alibaba.
And the European strategy languishes, apart from making agreements and giving in to the Chinese and American "sirens" incapable of their own massive intervention on technological innovation and logistics, which evidently means improving efficiency, reducing transport costs and guaranteeing competitiveness of businesses. Which, although digital, require widespread and capillary storage to be efficient. The good intentions of Brussels with a ridiculous plan given the firepower in terms of GDP represented is substantiated in less than 20 billion US dollars and already sees the production of batteries for the new challenge of the electric car won by the Chinese and South Koreans.
In short, the integration of technological systems of non-European production in all sectors of daily life but also of administrative, hospital and academic networks is a reality and therefore restricts the field of maneuver and leaves little room for sectoral action for the EU which will necessarily have to come to terms in a trade war that always and inevitably sees it in tow.
Furthermore, as emerges from the excerpts from the NATO meeting, where support for Turkey was reconfirmed despite Erdogan's anti-democratic drift and the "excesses" against the Kurds and Armenians under wraps, the Baltic countries emerged victorious by obtaining a new headquarters for the Multinational Division North .
But how does the European Union stand in the face of the Middle East conflict and its American ally in view of the Helsinki meeting with Putin? I would say in no particular order and each to profit from trade exchanges with Iran and Qatar as in the case of Macron, without ever a firm conviction against Assad or a strategic positioning on the tables on the post-war Syria and Turkey's hostage on the migrant issue.
AND ITALY ON THE ROPES
In all this situation, Italy lives within a government that is already divided, and apparently hesitant in the face of international obligations, an unproductive clash on the CETA agreement which is dangerously widening even on JEFTA but with declarations and moves that are politically inadequate to the European reality . Who in rejecting the CETA agreement with Canada and JEFTA agreement with Japan seem not to have understood the commercial dynamics of this new era of international trade which travels more on mega digital platforms than on trucks and is also transforming the management of the crucial points of a hub by now already conquered by the Americans, Chinese and Japanese.
PROJECTED IMPACT
Stopping at the surface of announcements on tariffs is always misleading because the confrontation of two ideologies, which are transformed into a global tactic of foreign and industrial policy, "Make America Great Again" for the USA with the Chinese "Belt and Road" (now also extended to the Latin American area) sees no rivals and the tactics on both sides of the ocean dominate, if not some pale imitators such as the Saudi Vision 2030, benevolently gathering the interest of well-intentioned European groups in opportunistic agreements and above all outside a strategic framework European with any ambition of continental value.
In fact, the European piece is missing in this digital globalization puzzle where it is evident that the signing of the JEFTA remains crucial for the EU in order not to definitively lose the coupling to the tow of the digital turning point. Taking into account the inevitable complications of Brexit, and the precarious situation of the German banking system conditioned by an exposure to derivatives which are at the very center of the financial match between the City of London and European banks, all the attention will be focused not only on the outcomes of the trade conflict ongoing will be for the progress of the post-2020 EU budget and the launch of the stabilization and convergence funds for 55 billion euros, for which it should be said: better late than never.
