If you're getting tariffs anyway, why not just take the yoke of American business protection laws off your shoulders? Let French engineers sell jailbreaking hardware for iphones, or Romanian developers sell unlock keys for John Deere tractors.
Because they are terrified that there will be unpredictable and turbulent times for the major industries?
Just look at the public opinion polls, EU citizens are ready to take on Americans and even the most pro-US countries are barely on the green in public opinion towards US. The problems is that the old guard, the establishment is fanatically pro-US and pro stability. Which means that the current politicians are in odds with what the public wants and eventually either the public will have to become pro-US again or the anti-US politicians will take stage. US Doing stuff like tariffs that can destabilize the stability folks can push things to much earlier.
Nations (even left wing) need the ability of sovereignty to apply their ideas/iterate on them.
Make the existence of their sovereignty a threat and all factions will stand united setting their differences aside (usually).
Like its one of the most effective ways to unite a complete nation against a cause, in this case its against America and its calling the wrath of not just the danish people but the whole EU as it feels not just a threat on Greeland but EU itself.
It is sold by Israeli engineers for at least a decade and mostly bought by law enforcement.
> Romanian developers sell unlock keys for John Deere tractors
That infrastructure exists since year 2000. Called chiptuning tools, but it is usually done by Italians or Swiss. And specifically for John Deere we had some Ukrainian company, I don't remember exact name.
Yes. That's the point Cory wisely makes: that America has forced other countries to agree to our draconian & anti-human brutal felony-offense-of-business-nidel IP laws, as a condition for other trade agreements.
Most regions do have these laws. Enforcement sometimes is lax, yes, but America and it's businesses do go after people internationally sort of at their pleasure.
Having a world where it's not illegal to understand & look at how the devices around us work is a bare minimum, imo, spiritually, for government to stop being in opposition to honor erectus, man, the tool maker. Letting us do things too lets us live up to our namesake of homo sapien, man the brain-ed one.
> why not just take the yoke of American business protection laws off your shoulders...
Because that means we in the US may as well quasi-nationalize major European investments in the US like VW, Siemens, Saint-Gobains, OnSemi, NXP, Arm, and Nexperia and target European luxury cultural exports like Cognac (LVHM), Wine (LVMH), designer clothes (LVMH), designer purses (LVMH), and others like China did.
As a result, oligarchs like (eg.) Arnault (LVMH) would metaphorically slap Macron like they did on multiple occasions [0][1], and threaten to switch to supporting the RN. If they made Macron in 2017 [2], they can unmake him in 2026 [3].
It's the same story across Europe [4][5]. And any domestic capacity that could have remained within the EU is going to start leaving on January 27th [6].
Edit: can't reply
> how you get from IP law abrogation to 'quasi- nationalization'
IP Law protection is sacrosanct in any US trade deal, as we are a services exporter. If faced by actions like those mentioned above, we wouldn't be above retaliating.
This is why American tech companies successfully lobbied both the Biden and Trump administration to tamp down on any attempt on a Digital Services Tax by any country, such as with Canada [7] and the EU [8].
> As a result, oligarchs like (eg.) Arnault (LVMH) would metaphorically slap Macron like they did on multiple occasions [0][1], and threaten to switch to supporting the RN. If they made Macron in 2017 [2], they can unmake him in 2026 [3].
I don't think americans quite understand how much the population has shifted from being pro-USA to anti-USA
in the space of a year, as the orange cretin has been throwing his wrecking ball around
we don't have the cancer that is fox news
some billionaire who makes fancy handbags saying he's going to support a different political party will have zero impact on election results
> some billionaire who makes fancy handbags saying he's going to support a different political party will have zero impact on election results
Arnault already has. He's the reason Élisabeth Borne is no longer the PM [0] and why the billionaire tax failed [1]. And his rival Bolloré is the reason why the RN is at the cusp of power [2]
> we don't have the cancer that is fox news
Instead you have Vivendi and Canal+ who are now owned by Bolloré [3], who has been using the Murdoch/Fox News strategy as well [4].
Oligarchs like Bolloré continued to support, collaborate, and disseminate pro-Putin and pro-Russia media [0][1][2] despite Macron's avowed support for Ukraine and Putin going "full retard".
In other cases, oligarchs like Arnault have been personal friends with Trump since the 1980s [3] and have co-invested in his personal businesses for decades.
They'll continue to collaborate with Trump as well due to personal, ideological [4] and financial [5] ties.
> even the AfD are now distancing themselves from the US regime
Yet their backer Dröpfer, who has had a history of support Thiel projects like Vance [6] and continues to maintain capital relations with Thiel [7].
Even in Poland, Tusk came out against sending troops to Greenland [8] due to political pressure from the American funded Polish right [9].
The reality is, the US, China, Russia, and increasingly even India view European states as easily pliable [10]
I'm also aware that money is thicker than blood which is thicker than water. If forced to choose between collaboration and confrontation, a large portion will end up choosing collaboration.
As a Frenchman, I'm sure you are well aware of how in Vichy France, industry collaborated with the authoritarian regime via Comités d'organisation.
Humans are selfish and normal people cannot win against oligarchs. What else can we do.
I'm saying it won't get to that, because any European leader who even threatens such an action would face the threat of a no-confidence motion by a now well funded opposition.
I was curious how you bang out these replies, with sources. Do you have some script or something to format your sources at the bottom of each comment? Personally I liked seeing a well sourced comment, I'm always too lazy to do it for mine.
I used to be a staffer in this space and almost became an academic, but decided I like tech too much and fighting to spend half a decade doing a PhD in order to become an adjunct Econ or Policy professor at a state college would be a waste of my CS education. It's easy to cite sources on stuff when I've either studied with or under the people who are mentioned in these article, or been friends with their staffers.
> Do you have some script or something to format your sources
Ce n'est pas parce que vous choisissez d'ignorer l'américanisation de la politique française qu'elle n'est pas en train de se produire progressivement.
Both the US and France share similar undercurrents.
This article is just wrong about the facts. Doctorow says "Anticircumvention law originates in the USA", but anticircumvention law originates in the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which all EU members and all their major trade partners are signatory to. The DMCA was passed to 2 years after this treaty was signed to implement the American obligations under it.
The “and” is doing a lot of work there! You have to respond to US aggression by targeting US interests - it completely defeats the point to do things that also hurt your other trade partners and domestic big businesses. Do European big businesses (or Japanese big businesses) not want anticircumvention laws?
Some large businesses probably do WANT anti-circumvention laws , but that doesn't mean it's good for them. Kids always want more sugar than is good for them too.
Those kinds of laws are great for incumbent moats, much less for innovation. Compare eg. China. (or early USA or Japanese industrialization)
Takes century to bake biggest cake ever. Clown enters stage, applause. Clown throws cake to the ground. Audience waits for joke. Curtain falls. 38 trillion dollar bill for cake. Audience is the joke.
The bill was almost the same before the vote. A single vote or a single person decide nothing. The candidates were selected and the vote was driven where it had to be by those with real power over the the two parties, there was no real choice. What you see now would happen regardless of who the public voted for.
> What you see now would happen regardless of who the public voted for.
No. If Biden had attempted even a tenth (or Obama a hundredth) of what Trump has done, he’d be facing Nixon-level approbation and possibly real jail time.
Biden caused much harm as well, but he was not as overt as Trump. Trump reveals it out loud while Biden (and most politicians) said it in secret chambers.
I don’t know what could possess someone to say Biden was just as bad as trump. It’s self evidently false and sounds like the conspiratorial ramblings of someone who desperately wants to seem in the know. But just ends up looking like a moron.
I don’t know what could possess someone to say Biden was just as bad as trump. It’s self evidently false
They mention that its self evidence but there is genuine evidence for this as well (which report do you want?) and its a fact and not deeply personal swipes.
Your comment on the other hand feels like not addressing the main points of what the GP said and much more like a smokescreen to this.
Have you read the guidelines for this site (see link).
If users, particularly green accounts, have opinions then they are encouraged to express them without snark directed toward the person they are replying to.
Well I guess its understable that you might think its snark partially perhaps because of the fact that they said self evidence.
I do understand what you are trying to say but their point still stands in my opinion and if you want me to provide facts from real studies indicating what they mention as self evidence. I am more than happy to do so to have a more nuanced but still civil discussion.
but also the fact is that most of such rules kind of (soft break) during times of chaos as such and I do know that you understand it as well.
You could've also done a better job trying to explain why you feel its snarky as I had assumed that you are trying to show the rules in case any uncomfortable facts comes up (which I hope you aren't doing as my civil response might go to waste in that case)
True. Those who think they are being unfair just now, this is actually the fairest they've been since forever. Fairest in terms of arm twisting and other tactics being applied to everyone equally instead of being selective. Previously it was on the lines of the west and the rest, but now its just America and the rest.
Try continuing this line of thought instead of stopping at one novel half-thought. Perhaps there is something to the western world order that's worth defending?
As an American I will argue against my government's unilateral global adventurism all day long. That certainly doesn't mean that expanding the behavior is progress.
> As an American I will argue against my government's unilateral global adventurism all day long
I'm sure there are many Americans who would oppose this adventurism. I'm not sure whether that's because they believe its just a bad strategy to continue the status quo or because its just plainly a wrong way to treat other nations by force.
> That certainly doesn't mean that expanding the behavior is progress.
I don't mean it as progress. Its a regression but I hope there's a silver-lining at the end of all this for everyone.
You ascribed the label "fairest" as if the current state is closer to a desired ideal. This is a standard pattern of fascist propaganda - pointing out the longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the system in support of going backwards to where we didn't even try to live up to something better.
If you'd focused on what you see as the positive path forward, in spite of current events, then I wouldn't have written my comment.
In what twisted imaginary world is saying that a serial killer was fair to all his victims by being equally brutal with all of them means killing was the desired ideal. I'm not sure who proposed going backwards or what it even means.
Everyone is acknowledging the hypocrisy because it is hitting their bottom line this time.
I would like to see links to your opinions where you pointed to the "longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the systen" as a problem before the tariff nonsense.
> In what twisted imaginary world is saying that a serial killer was fair
Exactly this. One doesn't use the word "fair" to begin with. Being killed is decidedly not fair, period.
> I would like to see links to your opinions where you pointed to the "longstanding normalized hypocrisy in the systen" as a problem before the tariff nonsense.
Write a script go to back through my HN comments as far as you'd like? I don't have a blog or anything.
Off the top of my head - I was against the Iraq War, against Obama's drone assassinations, against intervention in Libya, against Israel's apartheid and genocide except for maybe two weeks after Oct 7 (they burned through their credibility that fast).
The main US international military action I've ever been in support of is helping Ukraine - it seems like a just defensive war of people who earnestly want liberalization and closer ties to the western sphere of influence. But even on that subject, the covert US meddling that set that stage for that conflict is still condemnable.
On a different but related topic, I've been against the surveillance industry ("big tech") from around when the term AJAX was coined.
Is there anything else you'd like my opinion on to show I'm not new to the subject?
you are hung up on the usage of the word "fair" with no room for alternate interpretation but you are asking others to let bygones be bygones because it is normalized and maintains the status quo.
Thanks. It took 6 levels of comments to point the obvious sarcasm. May be I give too much credit to average HN'er skills at recognizing sarcasm without an explicit /s :)
It's not resources (this time), it's the US' sinking relative standing in the world that is causing this. Any self-respecting empire facing the end of its global domination wants to self-destruct violently instead of slowly disappearing. Hence WW1&2 and now whatever will this be.
I have repeatedly said this but it doesn't even matter if they are a putin asset or what but what they are doing is literally what Russia wants and one can realize it when they think about it for soemtime but America's literally at the weakest right now.
So, since there's a lot of talk like this, how are we leeches?
If anything, surely it's the Americans who are leeches, what with the fact that they're living off software exports and monopolies as opposed to production of actual useful goods?
Do you think we didn't invest in our defence? Here in Sweden we put in 5% of GDP until the Soviet Union dissolved. It was pro-US politicians like Carl Bildt, a man who associated with US intelligence, who reduced defence spending. We had nuclear weapons and refrained from assembling them on a US request in return for being under your nuclear umbrella.
Not to take away from the larger point, but the US remains a manufacturing juggernaut compared to anyone that isn't China. It's still the #2 manufacturing nation in the world and produces more than the EU as a whole. It's just become a small aspect of a much larger economy.
Yes, but I think the US industrial output is overvalued.
The US has a very small value of total exports, and this lead me to assume that the goods it makes a lot of are not always competitive on the international market even though they sell for a great deal in the US.
I find this narrative in some corners of American politics fascinating because of how completely it misunderstands US power.
Hegemony isn't charity. It's expensive. What the US gains is an invitation to exert power all over the world from bases and ports within countries playing a willing role in the US position. It gains the US dollar as the reserve currency and petro-currency of the world. In particular, without the world accepting the US dollar as the reserve currency, the US's ability to maintain a large budget deficit evaporates.
To gain this sort of power without invitation and strong alliances built on shared understanding and trust will cost the US much, much more in the longer term.
As an American, that's not how any of this works. You've bought into foreign propaganda aimed at destroying the US's leadership position in the western world.
Maybe. I feel like I watched live on 4chan as Trump was presented as a joke and then true believers started posting as well. Maybe 4chan was documenting the phenomenon but it always felt like it willed it into existence like it did q-anon.
Fox News has never cared about Greenland, and was energetically anti-Trump during the 2016 primary, most of his 1st term, during the Biden presidency, and during the 2024 primary. They're almost fully in the bag for him right now, but hate tariffs.
But even now, Fox News refused to sign on to the new Pentagon press pass requirements, and gave up their access.
Important things are going on. It's not good to mindlessly repeat tropes; we have to actually engage with the world as it is.
It's not about Fox News pushing the Greenland annexation bullshit, it's for everything else they did to be a mouthpiece to spread the "libs are bad!". These acts have a direct link to the power Trump amassed.
Refusing the Pentagon prrss requirements is a nothingburger when for the past 10-15 years it brainrotted a large cohort of the American population.
Even being the slimeballs they are, they all each knew how bad Trump was for their party and for our country. Yet one by one they kissed the ring and now we're expected to lick the boot.
Yet the American people seemed to back Trump. Whenever someone stood up against him like say Rubio the polls would go like 80% Trump 20% Rubio. That's a bit I find puzzling as a non American. Why not choose someone basically decent like Rubio, rather than the Donald?
The downstream effects for America of this can be so insane that this might be the reason that the bubble might pop in the first place when reality sets in.
Somebody should do a cost analysis of this and how it would impact S&P and the downstream effects of that as well and so on.
See the recent news about Canada strengthening economic ties with China and welcoming them into their auto market. This wouldn’t have happened in a million years had it not been for US tariffs and hostilities towards Canada. America is truly uniting the world (against them).
The EU/Mercosur deal looks like it’s going to pass too. This move will only make it more likely. America first will become America alone pretty quickly.
I think this is the biggest indicator of permanent damage. The EU politicians aren't as impulsive and loud as the US, they won't do anything drastic when necessary changes take time to implement. They will buffer this hurt as much as they can, to cut their losses. However, the fact the trade deal now suddenly passed, after 20 years(?) of talk, points to a fundamental shift behind the scenes. Things are clearly in progress.
I presume, it's the lack of opposition and outrage. Americans letting it happen. It's evident, there is no waiting this out. Today it's Trump, tomorrow it's Vance or whatever lunatic. 38 trillion debt, but nothing to show for it, foreign assets abandoned, power projection crumbling and spread thin. Things are expected to get unstable. The US will never be trusted or even respected again, not any time soon.
EU is also this close to making a deal with India and both India and EU are enthusiastic about this deal or EU is very optimistic to create a deal with India
A deal which was being on hold for atleast a decade.
It's just not the EU which is more willing to make deals but the rest of world (India got hit with 50% tarrifs) as well.
The president who is willing to fix this will have to bend the knee. The US behavior is straight insulting and caused major economic damage. If your drunk uncle pointed a gun to your head, a simple "Sorry!" won't do.
Quite frankly, considering the wide diplomatic damage and collapsing influence, paired with its deep social, cultural and economic internal issues... I can totally see the US failing. They depend so much on power projection and economic influence, I don't see how they could possibly manage on their own. What will happen to the dollar if the US isn't guaranteeing stability anymore? The debt will explode and former allies may call on their stake. Due to the AI bubble, the American economy is worse than it looks. It may all come down together.
Is California going to hold the bag for Florida? What's being American other than an international embarrassment and a bully, at this point? How strong is the shared identity when it comes to it? With ICE and all, can they get over the differences in "opinion" about who's deserving human rights and who doesn't?
> The president who is willing to fix this will have to bend the knee.
A similar instance of this is happening currently in the talks between EU/UK — The EU is demanding a „Farage“ clause. They want a guarantee that the damages are paid for in case Farage becomes prime minister and will roll back all treaties and trade deals and what not.
I have a similar take and I have written in one of the comments here about it but America's biggest export has been finance and this just seals the deal.
"Quite frankly, considering the wide diplomatic damage and collapsing influence, paired with its deep social, cultural and economic internal issues... I can totally see the US failing"
The only thing that a new democrat president or any new president even the most extremely fixable can do is risk mitigation. Its like the breaking point of a rubber band, they have streched it far enough and now it wont go back no matter how much amounts of sorry
I don't know, I was highly pessimistic about Trump from the start but even I didn't expect this much, at this point, its game over. I used to chalk up some things to stupidity due to Occam's razor but when you combine all of these things together (especially with Epstein files), to me it doesn't feel like stupidity but malicious behaviour.
I was feeling when trump flipped off an american citizen to be weird and now this.
At this point, just give me a break from world politics as a non American, the news cycle is so fast and depressing, like moving the world a century back depressing
> What's being American other than an international embarrassment and a bully, at this point?
This is a good point and I don't know what the answer is. To be American is to be a citizen of Eternal Trumpistan. Trump is America and America is Trump at this point. They have no soft power on the world stage at all any more, they're largely detested, even by their own friends.
The USA had an important role to play in the rest of the 21st century and China could have been contained. But it's over now. Good job Americans. Good job you fucking morons.
There might be more competition in Europe than you think, because there are fewer companies that dominate the whole continent.
Also Europe houses the company that builds the worlds most complex machines, which depends on innovations made by hunderds of other companies. I worked at one of those companies.
"Things are going to be so much better when we needlessly make them shittier."
WTF Americans. We will do anything to just be chill with this crap. I don't know about you, but in school when I was lazy and waited for the last minute and did my work purely out of pressure I did not, in fact, do better work, and got worse outcomes (a worse grade than I normally got).
What happened was you learned what you just said, and it changed you for the better for the rest of your life. Going through the experience was a 1% negative in trade for a 99% positive.
Why Truncate quotes to to make it sound like I was responding to something other than what I did? The post are right on top of eachother.
It might be good for Europe/the world, but it is not 'America first' or good for America.
Why would we want to inflict MORE competition on ourselves? We can easily create competition within our own country if that is a desirable outcome. To beat my analogy to death if a class is graded on a curve, I'm not recruiting the smartest people I know into it just because 'that will make me try/work harder'.
That would be falsifying the country of origin. The fact that the ship sailed from Greece or whatever doesn't change the fact the part was made in France say.
Nope, you form a company in Italy and sell your goods you produce in France to that company. That Italian company ships it the same way you always did. Since Trump is erratic and there's no real trade deal between those countries and thus US doesn't have a case to claim that someone is breaking the rules of origin. Not to even mention that you can't put tariffs on individual EU countries anyway. That's EUs domain.
If you think that this wouldn't happen, check out Germany's exports to Kazakstan and other neighbors of Russia after EU started sanctioning Russia. It's not just possible, it's commonplace.
Great point... Whichever country Donnie forgot to put on the list will become the country of import... This would not even require physical move of goods. What a joke this is....
I wish Europe would just push back. More than what they are currently. There is so much potential there, but somehow the EU all look at the US as some form of idealogical father figure. Excuse the hyperbolic-talk.
I don't think it is true. It's like saying "I wish those kids didn't let the bigger one bully them". The reason the bully is bullying is because he is in a position to do it.
The EU is being careful because the US are more powerful.
Trump has repeatedly backed off when he's challenged. It's happened time and time again. It's the reason TACO is a thing. The best strategy against him is to be relentless about pushing back, even if on paper the US is more powerful.
It seems you can also just lie to help him save face, like Canada did when it agreed it would adopt very strict border control policies to stop "drugs coming into the USA," and listed out steps that all were just existent Canadian laws and policies.
The problem that US generals have right now is that Trump has gotten the idea that the US (viz., he himself, in his mind) ought to literally own Greenland and he does know how real estate works. Treaties, mineral deals, guarantees for additional military bases that would mean de facto control over Greenland would work with a rational person. However, they won't work with someone who insists on buying or annexing a country to own its territory.
Yeah, another strategy is to just give him something he can claim as a W even if it's bullshit, or to glaze him enough. He's so hyperfixated on owning Greenland though, that I'm not sure those will work this time.
This effectively means the end of the 0 percent tariff on US products. There are also already calls in the EP to activate the Anti-Coercion Instrument:
The problem is NATO, a lot of the EU is reluctant to push back because at the end of the day the US guarantees that Russia cannot pursue the type of landgrab it is currently trying to do in Ukraine against other states. The risk that the US runs into when trying to take Greenland is that this argument loses weight instantly, so the expectation is that the EU will be much more willing to use its anti coercion tools if Trump tries to make it a reality.
Russia already fails in Ukraine where they are fighting with our old junk, and the other EU States are kicking their defense industry in full gear. What makes you think they could win a full scale war against the EU
Russia don't have to be able to win a full-scale war against the EU for such a war to break out, it suffices that deterrence breaks down sufficiently that Russia get the idea they can get away with some land grab, e.g. in one of the Baltic countries.
The war in Ukraine illustrates very well the difference between perception and reality. Perception counts for deterrence.
The Baltics are protected under the EU defence clause, NATO or not they will be assisted by the EU.
It's already quite clear the US has virtually left NATO, at this point they wouldn't assist at all with a landgrab in the Baltics so I'm glad the EU defence treaty is more forceful about the level of aid/assistance than Article 5.
NATO at this point is virtually dead, there's no trust in the USA and the rhetoric about Greenland has cemented it. Hope the Canucks can join a defence pact with the EU, the Trump admin and its Project 2025 achieved what they wanted.
".. because at the end of the day the US guarantees that Russia cannot pursue the type of landgrab it is currently trying to do in Ukraine against other states"
I am sorry to say that we (Europeans) increasingly do not believe that the US would help us.
It's like when every liberal scoffs at leftists opposing US imperialism, nothing about the power balance has changed. Europe was always a vassal of the empire. This is the liberal international order, this is what that means, not what they tell you it means, but what it actually means.
That's why they can kidnap Maduro, have the BBC censor the word "kidnapped" in their reporting on it. Have every European politician applaud it, point to Maduros case against him at the ICC and have Netanyahu fly over France. You can't do anything about Greenland, the same way you can't do anything when he comes for Norways state-owned extraction industry next. Liberals can scream hypocrisy tears all they want, this is the world they built. The empire is coming home.
Leftists wanted her to not be a dog shit politician in order for her to win, they were screaming for her to embrace real substantive policy positions and not business as usual, corrupt, liberal elitism. The same leftists are now in the street protecting communities from the gastapo, while liberals debate about which words they can say. It were those exact liberal politics that lost Hillary the election too, and then you were screaming too about how it was all Bernie's fault. For christ sake, Trump was able to sell himself as the PEACE CANDIDATE, how can you fuck this up so badly?
Because when you have a brain you understand that a more center oriented candidate with Luke warm opinions in policies has more chances of being acceptable to a larger audience than a candidate with more "substantive" policies.
Having Biden running at the start was the real issue.
I just don't understand the perspective that Trump is a historical threat and therefore we can't accept business as usual. I have a number of disagreements with the status quo myself, but I'm not going to pursue them until Trump is out of power, because I want to absolutely minimize the number of people who feel they have to choose between supporting Trump and abandoning some principle of theirs. To me, any other strategy seems tantamount to saying that Trump isn't so bad.
But your lukewarm candidates lost twice, Hillary lost, Kamala lost. The point we are making is that they lost, because they are lukewarm. There is a reason Trump won in the first place you are ignoring, you are ignoring the times of unprecedented grievances that people have, people want real change. Trump represents that change to people, a fascist lie and scapegoating of course, but you are representing the comfortable elite under whom nothing will ever change for the better for anyone. All you have is complain about leftists, we didn't loose, you lost twice. Dems are more unpopular than ever, even now under fucking Trump, your politics are dogshit and you don't have anybody else to blame for it.
I don't represent or subscribe to what you think! I agree that both of them were weak candidates who lost where a better candidate could have won, and I myself have been growing away from the Democratic party ever since the 2016 primary.
What I cannot agree with, what I find completely unacceptable, is the idea that any dispute over candidate quality can justify splintering the anti-Trump coalition. If Bernie were the 2024 candidate, I assure you I would have even harsher words for any business types who ran around complaining about him.
Two party system is such a mess. I blame two party system more than anything. When you reduce everything to two party, its so reductive and this is the mess you are gonna have to face because of it.
A key point is that it's an electoral system from hundreds of years past that was never intended to be a two party system, one set up by founders who in the large wre not even fans of party politics (one, two, or more).
It is a system that by it's design is more or less doomed to iterate into a Hotelling's law quagmire of two nose to nose opposing sides neither of which represents any kind of majority or popular view.
The US electoral system is well past due for a revamp, as recommended by it's founders who judged it "good enough" for a while ... until a despot appeared.
I agree but trust me when I say this, its not gonna happen.
I see people so entrenched in American politics who cant believe that there can be independents atleast in how the current voting works
They probably need better voting mechanisms... but for which they are gonna have to vote and no republican or democrat is gonna propose this ( i really don't think so) and the people can probably only vote for republican or democrat (independents very few) in the current system...
So its doomed and this is the reason why. A lot of American politics in the end feels like this or that, not knowing the nuances and polarization (in some sense) from both parties while still bieng the same (corruption stemming from lobbyists)
It's just really sad to see because to me its like not just Trump being a hostile takeover (which he is) but rather that both parties and the system failed the people so that someone like trump could spin up in the first place and now this is even happening.
If I were to tell you even 2 years ago all the things happening in America, you would believe we are in a black mirror episode or Its a bad dream but its reality now & we (non Americans) just gotta deal with America impeaching on other countries sovereignity trying to buy things outright and all escalations and the final one remaining is war and they haven't put it off the table as well
As a non American you have a semi reasonable chance of being to sit back, take a beat, and watch (maybe) Trump implode and self destruct within the US system and maybe some following rebuilding of the system "as intended" with better safeguards.
Trump’s triumphant narrative is not working at home, either. A new CNN poll released Friday shows that fifty-eight percent of Americans believe that Trump’s first year in office has been a failure. Americans worry most about the economy, but concerns about democracy come in second. The numbers beyond that continue to be bad for Trump. Sixty-six percent of Americans think Trump doesn’t care about people like them. Fifty-three percent think he doesn’t have the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president.
Sixty-five percent of Americans say Trump is not someone they are proud to have as president.
The EU has a huge strategic problem because they let their own defenses and industry rot for decades and can't functionally stand alone against Russia, US pressure, and Chinese economic infiltration / industrial replacement at the same time. At least, not without great sacrifices the population isn't willing to make, like pension reform.
So they are playing gentle with the US because it's the least bad choice right now.
The EU is 450 million people! It's the size of the entire continent of south america! It was the richest part of the world for centuries! They absolutely should be able to function as an independent block with international trade for convenience and not survival.
Not even the US can stand against China by itself...
The EU still has a large military industrial base getting revitalised as we speak, it didn't rot, it simply didn't need to pump out massive amounts of gear until this point.
Poland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Czechia, etc. all have different kinds of weapons manufacturers. You can even include the UK, and Norway in the mix even though they aren't in the EU.
No, the EU obviously did need to pump out massive amounts of gear, and failed to, and that's why four years into a war, Ukraine is still suffering under the yoke of a country with 1/10th the GDP of the EU.
If the EU had taken their responsibilities seriously given the MASSIVE THREAT next door, Ukraine would have had massive ordinance dumped on it in March 2022 and been free of Russians by Christmas.
It failed for political reasons. Political leaders being afraid to get involved in the war. Also do not rule out right wing political parties that are often anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia due to being sponsord by Russia.
The USA also has had it share of preventing the EU from getting involved.
China has a population of 1.4B people yet they import huge quantities of fuel and food and we can't pretend that they lacked investments in core industries.
That may actually be an advantage: position Europe as a neutral block that trades with everybody, and it may actually be valuable enough as a neutral that anytime one of those three has designs on it, the other two would naturally have to combine to thwart them.
The fact is that there is no potential there. Europe has no leverage over the US. It is not holding back anything, it has nothing.
Somehow when the US went to war with Russia, it ended up completing the conquest of Europe. Europe used to just be stagnant. Now it is stagnant and isolated from everywhere except the US, and the US treats it accordingly.
> ASML relies on the United States for several of its components, and it’s this very reliance that has allowed the United States to use the Foreign Direct Product Rule and impose export controls on ASML products. However, there are signs of a shift. ASML has already started to reduce its dependence on American technology, aligning with the EU’s goal of strategic autonomy. Earlier this month, ASML announced a major investment in Mistral, France’s flagship AI startup. The Dutch firm invested $1.5 billion in Mistral, becoming the company’s largest shareholder. The deal was widely seen by policymakers as a move that strengthens European ‘digital sovereignty.’ In a sector dominated by American tech giants, ASML’s Mistral investment represents a growing realization from Europe: cooperation within the bloc is necessary for the EU to stay competitive in the AI race.
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I don't follow, how exactly does the investment into a French AI startup reduce ASML's "dependence on American technology"? Is it a supply-chain dependence, or a revenue-making dependence?
> Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland would face the tariff and that it would climb to 25% on June 1 if a deal is not in place for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland” by the United States
My impression as a European is that trust in the United States has now been burned, and that companies are slowly, but inexorably, completely rethinking their dependence on the U.S. I believe this is a process that is not reversible in the medium term.
Trump, like any politician, will sooner or later pass. How many institutional reforms will the United States have to undertake, and how long will it take before the world trusts them again?
This is correct. Our company (about 40 people in the engineering team) just did a painful move from homegrown orchestration of EC2 instances to containerized ECS/Fargate.
We will now move to some form of "pure" EU-hosted K8s. No more AWS. I bet we will end up saving lots of money too.
Kubernetes was always the next step. We just didn't know the trigger would be the US going _this_ hostile.
Our marketing director chipped in and thinks it will be worth quite a lot if we can show/say that our service is completely independent of the US - but she wants to say it more diplomatically - exactly how is tbd. I disagree. We should just write it out loud and be proud about it. We'll see.
Perhaps: "We work and live in X land. We run all of services in X land, in facilities owned by people living in X land.
The thing is that, even if Trump never becomes a full-out authoritarian, sooner or later someone will follow that path and do so (unless there are institutional reforms with teeth after Trump is gone). I don't trust the US to remain a real democracy long-term, even after Trump is gone.
That's a bit outside the design of NATO I think. The rules say NATO countries should be nice to each other but the present situation wasn't planned for.
The EU defence clause is more binding than the NATO Article 5. It also demands that the other states * obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power*
whereas Article 5 let's other states decide how much aid they want to supply
ok, but now we’re nit-picking about the meaning of “army”. There are “NATO troops” while there aren’t “EU Troops”.
I would still like to understand why previous poster said the EU defense agreement was more robust, I am genuinely curious about what that agreement contains and how well it was respected in the past.
It is wildly fascinating to experience, in real time, how fragile the US system is. Trump really did show that the US is built on the assumption that people in power will behave, basically a honor system. Trump is stress testing every single aspect of the US.
He's dousing the US with gasoline, and fumbling around with matches. The people around him, knee deep in gas, are too afraid to take the matches from him.
In so many other countries, Trump would face a no confidence vote. Snap elections.
Actually, I'd say it held up pretty well all things considered. This required decades of propaganda, years of state actor support, bankrolled and media managed by the richest man in the world, the complacency of the existing institutions, and most recently, submission by big tech and the the wider aristocracy.
Yeah those checks and balances that Yanks are always waxing poetic about have turned out to be basically horse shit. There are no checks and balances, they elect a king for 4 years and then hope for the best. That's the American system.
Being from the UK - one of the privileged few to be tariffed - I couldn’t give a fuck about this.
The thing that makes me viscerally angry in my soul though is reading about Greenlanders who are now stocking up on food and/or making plans to leave their country if the worst case happens.
What the actual fuck. I can’t believe this is the reality we’re living in.
So, tariff away. As someone else said, it’s a badge of honour at this point.
So throw caution to the wind because a country (not your country) with 100,000 people are stressed out about geopolitics and possibly being acquired by the richest nation in the world?
Yep, as a former Atlanticist and admirer of the USA, who cares any more? Any opportunity to upset Trump is worth Trump putting up taxes on Americans (aka tariffs).
Also from the EU and I think the EU cannot back down here. The only way the US gets Greenland is if they seize it or the population votes for it. A tariff is just not going to make a difference and underlines to the EU how craven the US has become.
Fascist states get at least one free pass. For Germany it was Poland, for the USA I believe they're deciding between Venezuela and Greenland. Personally I think the better bet is Greenland because they can probably get Venezuela for free after since nobody cares about Venezuela. A "two in one deal" if you will, perhaps one of America's greatest inventions.
Edit: I meant to write Austria but am so used to writing "German invasion of Poland" that that's what came out of the thumbs
I'd hardly call any of Germany's prewar annexations free.
It was clear very early on that Germany was being led by a violent bully, so past a certain point appeasement wasn't a blank check, but was instead intended to buy time to spin up war industries.
The Greenland situation is more like Germany annexing the Sudetenland (the border regions of Czechoslovakia) in 1938. And after that Hitler got his homeland Austria as another freebie. That's stretching the analogy a bit, but Venezuela might be Trump's Austria. His Poland would be something like Canada
Europe cant afford to have enemies on both sides. It will align with the US reluctantly because even a bat shit crazy US is better than Russia. China plays it too close to the chest to be a friend.
I think Europe can handle Russia by itself quite well. The Baltics are vulnerable, but Poland will definitely kick Russia's butt in a military engagement. Poles will defend EU's eastern flank.
I expect Europe to distance itself from US. Let's see.
I think you are underestimating how entrenched and strong US lobby is. European governments are filled to the roof with US boosters whos whole wealth is tied to what US wants. Even people like Macron have been bribed by US companies for decades.
And now with huge hard right turn in europe all those “nationalists” will just bend over even more to get US lobby money and consulting contracts. They are already tied to national oligarchs so they welcome Trump and will likely sell off Ukraine to get “peace” and slowely dismantle EU. The aim is that every country will follow hungary and slovakia - corrupted, weak and undemocratic.
It looks like the behavior of EU governments contradict what you wrote. Germany is not selling off Ukraine (last week Merz re-affirmed full support for Ukraine's security)
And the US are now being hated by Europeans. Supporting Donnie's latest lunacy is not a winning political move in EU. For example, France, Germany, and Sweden sent troops in Greenland to protect against US, all those US boosters in their governments be damned.
So I think what I wrote makes sense: EU will distance itself from US and will be able to protect itself against Russia. It helps EU that today's Russian military is not the one from 1943/44/45 - but it is the one from 1918 (corrupt and ineptly led).
Most of the western europe would have carved up Ukraine already to get “peace”. But baltics/nordics/poland won't budge. Western europe is scared to send weapons let alone send any actual military help. When crowdfunding is rivaling countries support then it doesn't look like they are taking it seriously.
Which part of Western Europe is afraid to send weapons? Britain who sent Shadow missiles to Ukraine? Germany who sent tanks? France who committed troops on the ground if there is a peace treaty in Ukraine?
Germany, UK, and France have continuously asked for all territory to be given back to the Ukraine-which is the opposite of wanting to carve up Ukraine. Another one of your posts that is contradicted by reality.
I wish you were right and western europe will get involved with actual troops. Hopefully the situation is changing… but “reality” is that germany sent like 20 tanks. Ukraine has over 1200 in their disposal. Poland send almost 400… i mean even Netherlands (to their credit) sent 5x more tanks than Germany.
I guess as the situation will get more dire, western europe will have turn around but its been going on for what 4 years? They better do stuff. Because if hard right - likes of AfD gets into power there is high chance they will just leave Ukraine to Russia.
Farage whos been campaigning for Trump in US multiple times? Meloni who is Elon Musks bestie going on dates together?
Their disapproval of Trump is simply calculation. They would have been hurt too much otherwise. Once most of europe will go their way (europe has huge hard right turn incoming) the rhetoric will change. It will be normalized, they will sell europe in name of anti-regulation, lack of innovation and “incompetence” of other eu states.
Campaigning for Trump was useful for Farage when Trump was a fun edgy character that his base liked. This Greenland stuff is deeply unpopular across the entire political spectrum in Europe, there is no way to back selling off a sovereign territory to the US and have a hope of winning an election.
That's the same thing what am i saying. But what do you think Farage would do if he was already in power? Contradict his ally? They would cook up some angle so both of them would get something out of it. Farage is already busy downplaying the situation and steering the discussion away.
I don’t buy this at all. Russia is a relatively small economy with a tiny fraction of the EU population. The US is not going to launch a shooting war with Europe. Europe is not going to back down here. This Greenland thing is deeply unpopular in the US. It’s only a conflict because of one senile old man who will be dead soon.
It's not just 1 old man. Most of the wars Trump does is just a logical continuation of the military industrial complex strategy, he just doesn't hide it at all.
Venezuela was already a target, Panama was already conquered, and I'm sure Greenland was in plans already.
The US already has 1) a base in Greenland, and 2) and agreement with Denmark that they can arbitrarily increase their presence there. America could increase it's presence a hundredfold and start putting missiles there, and Denmark would be fine with it.
America is threatening Greenland for one reason: Trump wants to brag that he added Greenland to America.
Venezuela has been an issue for all administrations since Bush. Greenland has never been an issue because there is absolutely no rationale for it. The US can put as many troops there as it likes and is welcome to try to profitably extract minerals from a frozen wasteland. This is just Trump wanting legacy because he’s a narcissist.
Germany is used to that, and it never seemed to deter them in the past. Us has a hard time deploying lots of troops vs Europe. Shoulder and truck launched weaponry, 3 shifts, 7 days.
> Europe cant afford to have enemies on both sides
Neither can the US. Imagine Europe supporting China in exchange for China backstabbing Russia - entire Ukraine and Belarus and maybe even Kaliningrad suddenly are up for grabs for EU while China gets Russian territories that it has historical claims to. Then China gets access to European technology (ASML and Airbus) which means that the US stops having massive technological advantage and suddenly the conquest of Taiwan starts being more realistic. China and Europe are too far away physically to come in direct conflict, especially as EU doesn't care about being a superpower.
This is unimaginable right now, but the more EU decouples from the US because of its unreliability, the more it might actually work out.
No I didn't. Nuclear missles are only relevant when the existence of the country itself is at stake. But when the war is at the edges of the country, then losing territory is preferable over nuclear war.
Think about it - in case shit hits the fan, would you rather cede some territory like Alaska or Guam, or would you start nuclear war which results in complete annihilation of all major US cities?
No one wants Kaliningrad now because it's 100% Russian. Annexing it means adding a Russian fifth column to your country.
I'm surprised by this, but my general opposition to ethnic cleansing has been weakened by understanding how Russia uses Russian migration to subvert nations from within. Transnistria, an independent Russian dominated portion of Moldava, exists entirely because Russians moved there in large numbers with the support of the Russian government to give them an ethnic wedge. Were I in charge in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Poland or the Baltics, I would seriously consider expelling all ethnic Russians.
It will not align with the US if that means territorial losses. Russia is an economical lightweight that's causing a bit of a headache on the eastern border but for the EU looking weak would make things so much worse.
I'm not sure giving mineral resources is reliable. See The Ukraine–United States Mineral Resources Agreement of 2025 and "Trump says Zelenskiy, not Putin, is holding up a Ukraine peace deal" a couple of days ago.
The US is a complete mess and completely unreliable as a defense and business partner. Trump is driving Europe towards China. Even though China supports Russia against Ukraine, China seems much more dependable to do fair business with.
What's next? Will he stamp on the ground like a five year old? I mean, there's this treaty between the US and Denmark that they can build military bases etc.
"The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants," said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.
Trump wants to brag, and be remembered, for adding Greenland to America, in the same way that Alaska was bought from Russia, or Louisiana from the French.
The US stations less people in Greenland than we did during the Cold War.
Security is not an actual concern (or we would, you know, station people there to provide security). Trump wants to be remembered, and adding a bunch of land is traditionally the way people he admires (like Putin) try to do that. It's all ego.
Don't you see how this kind of thinking is the problem? The UK was in 1900, and remains today, a prosperous country where almost all citizens can live happy and fulfilling lives. That's what makes a country great, not territorial claims or everyone else in the world doing worse. The people who support Trump wrecking the world order are doing so precisely because they aren't willing to accept that.
Lol Trump can't understand that he can't charge tariffs to an specific EU country. He is a big moron and his voters the little morons.
Nevermind, I hope he changes his mind and set a 1000% instead 10 so we can broke relations with such a stupid government. USA is following steps that Germany already took and its citizens are responsible of its crimes.
When we look back in a few years and ask the question: who actually got to pay for the Epstein crimes and coverups, we come to the surprising answer it is the Greenlandes and other innocent societies that got ripped apart by this maniac and his supporters.
A badge of honor. Although it's good to be cautious about retaliatory measures, it is perhaps time to think about imposing a digital services tax.
That being said, it's quite weird that these tariffs are imposed only on some EU countries (plus UK). How could that possibly work? EU companies can just export goods via other EU countries.
Of course, the DST should be instated ASAP regardless of what the US does - not having one is completely absurd in this day and age, one needs domestic industry to survive as a country (or federation) and that doesn't happen with 0% tarriffs, which is what "no DST" is the equivalent of for tech.
They're too big of a market to have companies pull out over this. China has even worse conditions for foreign companies and everyone bends over backwards for a chance to sell there. Counter to popular sentiment in US tech circles, as of this year the EU is the world's second biggest economy (beating China to third place).
The tariffs are claimed to be a national security emergency and without the approval or Congress, therefore the composition of Congress won't matter unless the Supreme court judges otherwise.
But the Supreme Court is going to judge, sooner rather than later. I sincerely hope they will rule against Trump (that seems to me the way that the merits of the case demand).
I think this whole thing is part of a plot to cause war or some protests in order to be able to declare a state of emergency allowing him to delay or cancel elections. If not the midterm, at least the next presidential elections. Because it is the only way he can stay in power.
The US had elections during their civil war in the 1800s, They had elections during WW2, major wars cannot even stop US elections legally. Doesn't mean he won't try, but it's not something he can do AFAIK.
When tariffs are imposed in this way (explicitly as a punitive response to political opposition, a coercive measure), we might as well call them what they are... economic sanctions or perhaps... economic terrorism.
So Trump doesn't like the fact that some European countries dare to oppose his dictat, so in response he's going to... raise the prices on US consumers?
I think he knows the end* is drawing near and he hasn't got long to cement his legacy in painting more of the map in his colours.
* 'end' being anything from nature's course, to losing the support of his own inner core as they jostle for succession, upcoming midterms leading to impeachment...
In my personal life, I've learned the hard way that when people seem to be acting irrational with regard to an iterated game, before ascribing irrationality to them it can be very helpful to examine if they're short timers, acting rationally with regard to a game that won't be iterated.
Hopefully the supreme court comes to its senses and realize that if they don't stop the madness now, the American people are going back to king rule, and their legacy as well as survival of their institution has one big question mark on it.
Right… why do you think they spent so much time intentionally rigging the courts with illegitimate judges? They’ve been planning a non-democratic takeover of the country FOR A LONG FUCKING TIME. They are just more open about it now.
As a American, given what the US is becoming now, also given that Denmark actually has reliable public healthcare and the US canceled it for its own people, Greenland is better off staying with Denmark than with the US. If Russia were to invade, NATO still holds.
This is about more oil mining, about Trump appeasing to his oil friends, considering Greenland very likely has a substantial quantity of it.
I don't think any oil execs are interested in this, just like they weren't interested in investing in Venezuela after Maduro's ouster (at least if you believe the Financial Times).
Rather these invasions appear to be the pet projects of neo-imperialist advisors in the government who see national growth as a zero sum game, a Starcraft-esque race for a finite set of resources where powerful countries can generate wealth only by using their power to steal from others. In Steven Miller's own words: "[The world] is governed by force, [is] governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."
I think it's even simpler than that. Trump wants accolades next to his name - one of the few presidents to have won the Nobel Peace Prize and one of the few presidents that added land to the US.
Instead he will soon be remembered as the worst US president ever - even after his first term he was already third-worst in most rankings and his second term is orders of magnitude worse.
He will be remembered as the president that destroyed the constitution, destroyed America's formidable power projection, the president that destroyed 60 year long alliances, the president that was unimaginably corrupt. I just hope that American school books will also contain the verdict.
He was actually asked about why he is even doing this nonsense by the NYT, since they can get Denmark already to agree on any new military bases (they already have one) or mineral extraction anyway:
David E. Sanger:
Why is ownership important here?
President Trump:
Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.
Katie Rogers
Psychologically important to you or to the United States?
President Trump
Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.
Just imagine the amount of lives that it will cost to carve him from his bloody throne and drag his supporters into deprogramming camps. It will only get more costly with each passing month.
All this Greenland stupidity could be an ongoing distraction from the Epstein files, Wag the Dog style. The attack on Venezuela coincidentally was the day that the DOJ was supposed to explain their redactions to Congress, which they didn't do and there hasn't been a peep since. I don't know what's in those files but I do know that Trump fought tooth and nail against Congress voting to release them, and he wouldn't have done that if they weren't damming.
Why didn't Russia think of that? They could have just placed tariffs on France, Germany, the UK, etc. if they don't facilitate Russia purchasing Ukraine for a price of their choice /s
Since the only thing Trump understands is force, I am looking forward to the retaliation from and military positioning of EU member states to defend Greenland. Perhaps it is what is needed to finally impeach.
7. If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.
If you're getting tariffs anyway, why not just take the yoke of American business protection laws off your shoulders? Let French engineers sell jailbreaking hardware for iphones, or Romanian developers sell unlock keys for John Deere tractors.
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