I would also stress that all the EU/China/US trade behaviour analogies are ultra facile simply because you need to be quite far down the rabbit hole to see the EU as outright comparable to a country. 1/

It's the world's most advanced trade agreement. Yes, it does stuff beyond that, but for FTA purposes, it is 27 countries having agreed to unprecedented regulatory alignment and mutual recognition with hard enforcement. 2/

The US isn't an existing compromise like that. China isn't either. And so their priorities in terms of trade are simply at a far more basic level: there is no existing international regulatory alignment there, and market access starts minimal, so anything in an FTA is a gain. 3/

It is naive to expect the EU to not treat its highly liberalised internal market as one with a very high full access cost. Zero tariffs and quotas isn't an FTA default. It's unprecedented outside of entities LIKE the EU. So, to get it, the EU has said "play regulatory ball". 4/

And, while all of this is unprecedented, I'd argue it's being generous, because this version of "regulatory ball" is not "adopt everything we've done in the internal market" as it is for everyone else with that kind of access. It's "don't undercut the internal market". 5/

"Set your own rules but don't do anything that makes the internal market model unworkable, and in exchange you get highly generous access to that market."

I basically bonus action: rage whenever I see this being described as "unfair". It really ain't. 6/

So no. The US would never ask this of its neighbors. But it would also never let any neighbors get this close, as it isn't an expanding trading entity that's built on regulatory convergence principles. It's a country. The EU is not. So why should it act like one? 7/7