EU goods exports to the US amount to €532 billion and imports €334 billion. Europe has a surplus of €198 billion. Trump has imposed a 20% tariff on EU exports, which will cost the EU €106 billion and will be transferred to the US.
EU services exports to the US amount to €334 billion and imports to €482 billion. The US has a surplus of €148 billion. The EU has not imposed any tariffs.
The conclusion is clear: despite a near-perfect trade balance in goods and services between the EU and the US, the situation is replicated in services, where the opposite occurs. This directly penalizes the EU economy. The question is: why have negotiations been conducted this way? Are European citizens aware of this? It can be said with little margin of error that the majority are not.
The majority of services reside in digital companies that manage, store, and process data and information: Microsoft, Google, Intel, Nvidia, and so on, mostly American. Regulation in the US and the EU differs, also to the detriment of the EU.
In the EU, the GDPR, the General Date Protection Regulation, is a law that regulates how citizens' information and data, including their communications, can be processed, stored, and transferred. It emphasizes the importance of transparency and personal and explicit consent to access and use this private data of individuals and companies.
In the US, the equivalent law to this one,Cloud Act, authorizes the US government to access any information that US companies have about their customers, regardless of where it's stored. If this affected information stored in the US, it might make some sense. But if the information is stored in the EU, the US government can also access it if it's stored in the systems of US companies, despite any protections the EU citizen or company may be entitled to under European GDPR law.Cloud Actinvalidates the GDPR. It's legislated in the US, but it invades EU sovereignty.
This creates a legal conflict between what European data companies can do in the EU and what US companies can do with the same information. In the case of EU companies, the information is protected by law, the GDPR, and in the case of US companies, their management can freely access it thanks to the GDPR.Cloud Act,And this affects EU citizens without limitation. The nationality of the company that stores and manages the information counts, not the nationality of the information or its owner. In short, if a European government or individual stores or manages critical information on a US-owned system, the American government, according to American law, can access it, even if it is owned by a public or private entity or a non-American citizen. As in the previous case, most European citizens are unaware of this.
The imbalance in services, and therefore in the much larger and more numerous data companies in the EU and the US, means that most of the information on EU citizens and companies is accessible to the US government, not the EU government.
AI systems for deciphering data codes and algorithms are improving over time, and what may be difficult to decipher now will be easy to do so in 5 to 10 years. Consequently, governments store information they cannot decode today, but will be able to in the future. Insecurity is growing. The European Commission must protect European citizens, individuals, and businesses. The power imbalance between the EU and the US in this area is paradigmatic, and people are unaware of it.
This dystopia, which is unacceptable in the long term, should not be resolved through technology, but through law. The problem lies in the different levels of development in digitalization and information management in the US and the EU—it is much lower in the EU—and the solution must be a law that makes the level of information protection equivalent regardless of the means used to manage it. It is easier, more practical, and fairer, but it requires a courage that no European state or the EC currently possesses.
To move forward on this path, once the two laws are regularized, it is necessary for chip and system design and manufacturing capacity to advance in the EU.
It's a similar problem to the one experienced by the German automobile industry, which is being overtaken by the Chinese because the attributes most valued by buyers today are not the classic aesthetics, power, and operability, but rather information capacity, driving aids, and safety.
To change this situation, the EU needs information and courage, the opposite of its usual ignorance and laziness.
The US relationship with the EU has changed since 1945, and we must be aware of this. They are not the reliable friend that solved major problems when we had them. Certainly, European disunity does not help resolve this balance of power problem.
