After the G20 summit in Japan, US President Trump went to the only country where he could claim a sealed trade agreement: South Korea (Trump signed a slight update of the comprehensive 2012 Korean-US trade agreement). In Korea he toasted the deal as evidence he’s winning.

But in Washington officials were confronting a grim new reality for U.S. economic power. When Trump dialed up the heat with tariffs and threats, the rest of the world looked elsewhere for opportunities: Bloomberg reports that the European Union is taking advantage of the void created by Trump’s lack of Free Trade leadership by signing historic trade deals with Japan, Latin America, and Vietnam benefiting EU firms in these key markets over US firms.

“For two decades, Europe had been trying to nail down a pact with Brazil, Argentina and the two other members of Mercosur, a bloc traditionally known for its nationalist approach to industrial policy and protectionism. But hours before Trump and Xi met, the EU announced the deal was finally done. The message was stark. European industrial giants such as Airbus and Siemens would gain an advantage over their U.S. competitors in Latin America. Argentinian and Brazilian farmers would win an edge in Europe over U.S. competitors, adding to the decline of America as an agricultural export power… With Trump threatening the global order, officials in Brussels, Brasilia and Buenos Aires had spied an opportunity to forge the new economic alliance — just as the EU and Japan had in a deal that took effect earlier in 2019. A day after the leaders left Osaka summit, the EU signed a deal with Vietnam, a nation Trump just days earlier lambasted as ‘almost the single worst abuser of everybody.’”

And just to clarify what Trump calls “winning” as he visits Korea: The Korean trade deal (signed September 2018) has done nothing to reverse the bilateral US trade deficit (not that bilateral trade deficits matter, but it just shows its unclear what Trump was toasting in Korea as evidence he’s “winning”).

Data source: BEA