Russia on Thursday August 7, 2014 announced that they will be banning imports of agricultural products and food from the United States, the European Union, Australia, Canada and Norway as retaliation to ill-advised Western sanctions against Russia.
Russia Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev said that they will ban importation of pork, beef, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway for one year.
Russia is one of the largest market for agricultural exports that amounted to 11.8 billion euros ($15.7 billion) in 2013. That will be a massive lost on the European economy, which is struggling with recession right now.
Russia imported $6.7 billion of meat and meat products in 2013, and most of them were imported from countries that are included in the ban like Denmark (6.6%), Germany (6.4%), USA (5.3%), and Canada (3.8%).
As for Canadian, their $500-million Russian market for pork will be hard to replace. Ireland exported €150m of food and drink to Russia in 2011, and now that market is gone. Irish economy will definitely feel the pain.
European shares dropped as an effect of this ban. In Finland, they are worried that their struggling economy is headed for disaster.
Russia is still thinking about banning flights over Siberia that will have huge effects on European and American airlines routes to Asia.
Clearly, Barrack Obama and the European Union puppets didn't think this through. Why would you impose sanction on Russia for the Ukraine crisis? US didn't get sanctioned when they invaded Iraq. European Union should have shrugged Barrack Obama's pressure on hitting Russia just because he didn't get what he wants. Barrack Obama is like a spoiled child who throw tantrums when he don't get what he wants, and the European Union leaders are like his nannies who want to please him all the time even though their people will suffer in the end. U.S. Government should just stop sticking their nose on things that doesn't concern them. This is an epic failure on Barrack Obama's foreign policy. If the European Union goes into deep recession, they just have to look at the mirror and blame the gullible moron standing in front of them.
