Episode 344 · 2025-07-30 · 53:51 · Original in Finnish
Trump puts the EU in its place | Petri Roininen | Negotiator 344
Originally published as “Trumpin EU-kyykytys | Petri Roininen | Neuvottelija 344”
Recorded three days after the EU–US trade framework agreed at Turnberry, with both participants reaching the same verdict: the EU negotiated badly. Petri Roininen and Sami Miettinen work through the terms — 15 per cent on most EU goods, 50 per cent left on steel and aluminium, $750 billion of energy purchases and $600 billion of investment, against the United Kingdom's 10 per cent — and then turn to the part that got less attention: where capital goes next, and what that means for Finnish pension assets. Roininen's concrete proposal is that the pension companies pool one per cent of their assets, about €2.7 billion, into a new Finnish bank.
Core theses
- The EU lost above all because it had nothing to trade; the decisive threat was that any counter-tariff would simply be added on top.
- Low taxation, a tariff wall and the world's largest single market together create a preferential position for investment in the United States rather than Europe.
- If trade policy became a weapon, finance policy may be the next one, and it acts faster because it travels down the wires rather than through trade and investment.
- Finland's structural weakness is the absence of domestic capital, which explains both the investor base of the government debt and the financing difficulties of SMEs.
Watch and listen
Key moments
- 00:00 — Sami's new Neuvottelija jacket and the pocket square idea
- 00:53 — LinkedIn suggests Sami a job in Vantaa's ownership steering team
- 02:14 — An investment banker on a city salary of €3,900 a month: a thought experiment
- 02:32 — Trump's EU deal and the paradigm shift
- 03:06 — Sami's disappointment in the EU's negotiating skill
- 05:07 — The systematic failure of EU negotiations
- 07:48 — The absence of US federal VAT against European economic logic
- 09:12 — How the jumper economists reacted, and the impact analysis
- 10:57 — Effects on inflation and interest rates
- 12:16 — The wealth gap between the US, Sweden and Finland
- 14:03 — Europe as a fragile economic area
- 15:15 — Industry's weak competitiveness in the US market
- 17:03 — The case for reassessing municipal holdings — the Vantaa example
- 18:18 — LNG, energy and bilateral agreements
- 21:41 — Secondary tariffs and the reallocation of financial capital
- 23:24 — A new logic for investing pension assets
- 26:00 — Value choices: development aid or elderly care
- 27:31 — The new financial world and the fate of pension money
- 29:01 — Possible capital controls and the thinness of the banking sector
- 30:34 — Roininen proposes the pension insurers found their own bank in Finland
- 33:39 — Banking profitability and the sector as an investment
- 36:22 — Security of supply and the durability of structures
- 38:01 — A wish for bolder economic policy on the front foot
- 39:33 — Crypto, energy and the coming China deal
- 42:37 — The EU's car cluster and the France–Germany–Sweden axis
- 44:19 — Why can the EU not be a strong negotiator?
- 45:53 — The US–UK special relationship against the EU's added value
- 47:10 — Trump's 15 per cent tariffs and the EU's failure
- 48:45 — Europe's defence costs and the negotiating mandate
- 50:40 — The 25.5 per cent VAT as the government's weakest act
- 52:06 — Investors House's strategy and reaching dividend aristocrat status
Summary
Recorded three days after the EU–US trade framework agreed at Turnberry on 27 July 2025, with both participants reaching the same verdict: the EU negotiated badly. The first half is the deal and why it came out as it did; the second is where capital goes next, and what that means for Finnish pension assets.
The terms
Most EU goods face a 15 per cent tariff entering the United States — half the threatened 30 — including cars, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Steel and aluminium stayed at 50 per cent. The EU committed to $750 billion of US energy purchases and $600 billion of investment, plus military equipment worth hundreds of billions. The figure of $1,350 billion used in the episode is the sum of the two. The United Kingdom’s rate stayed at 10 per cent, so the EU’s is half again as high.
Why the EU lost
Roininen’s diagnosis is negotiation-theoretic and therefore transferable: the EU had no chips to play. Trump’s method is described as the property mogul’s formula — identify the other side’s weaknesses, confuse with outrageous demands, push into the corner, then make an offer that is hard to refuse. The decisive mechanism was simpler still: any counter-tariff would be added on top of the existing ones.
The observation that generalises furthest is that the same weakness shows in the EU’s internal negotiations, such as the recovery fund. Nobody in the episode challenges it.
Where the capital goes
The strategic argument is an opportunity-cost one rather than an export one: low taxation plus a tariff wall plus the world’s largest single market creates a preferential position for investment in the United States. From that follows the question the second half turns on — whether investing Finnish pension assets the same way as before is still justified — and the episode’s concrete proposal, that the pension companies pool one per cent of their assets into a new Finnish bank with a loan book of roughly ten billion.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Trumpin EU-kyykytys | Petri Roininen | Neuvottelija 344. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode, with the Turnberry terms checked, three figures qualified — including the claim that 98 per cent of Finnish government debt is foreign-held — and both participants’ interests disclosed: English · suomeksi.
Go deeper
Explore the ideas in depth
Guides connected to this conversation, with frameworks and further reading.
Negotiation Strategy, Leverage and Power: Reading the Counterparty You Actually Have
A negotiation guide from the co-author of Neuvotteluvalta — the sources of leverage, BATNA and anchoring in practice, using information asymmetry, breaking deadlocks, and what to do when the counterparty negotiates on power rather than consensus. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and two decades of negotiation writing.
People and topics
Guests: Petri Roininen
Topics: Geopolitics Finnish Economy & Policy Investing & Markets