Maybe Merkle and Harper can sing Hey Jude together.

Remember Harper's much heralded EU Trade Agreement, the largest, most historic, trade agreement ever! Well it appears that the largest EU partner, Germany is objecting to the investor protection clause in the Canadian deal.

This is the clause that allows foreign corporations to ignore the laws of their trading partner, by giving the foreign corporations the right to sue if such rights are denied. It is known as the ISDS or Investor State Dispute Settlement clause and was part of the original and subsequent North American Free Trade Agreements.

Further more from the article we discover that the Europeans only consider Harper's so called, historic free-trade agreement as a test for the agreement with the United States.

So much for Steve's analysis back in October:

Mr. Harper too played down the approval process saying the provinces are on side and that he expects the deal to be in place by the next election in 2015.

“The agreement as it now stands is not going to change,” he said. “I am certainly confident of its adoption in Canada. I think anyone who opposes it will lose and will make a big historic mistake in so doing.”

And for those who don't, remember here is Canada's second worse Prime Minister singing with Reagan in an effort to get the original NAFTA talks going and hence the title of the post.