Summary
Donald Trump has announced plans to impose 25% tariffs on the European Union, claiming the bloc was “formed to screw the United States.”
While details are pending, he suggested the levies would target cars and other imports. The EU, a major U.S. trading partner, has vowed immediate retaliation, with potential tariffs impacting $29.3 billion in exports.
French President Emmanuel Macron had attempted to dissuade Trump, urging focus on China instead.
Critics, including economists and conservative media, warn the tariffs could harm the U.S. economy.
Trump is kinda right. Charles De Gaulle wanted a united Europe to prevent Anglo-American influence. Aside from his Anglophobia, he vetoed UK joining then EEC because he thought UK is a Trojan horse for American influence into Europe. He also thought that the British are reluctant Europeans anyhow, so why let them in?
Fast forward 60 years later, and De Gaulle was found right. US companies tried to lobby the EU through UK. The Brits voted for Brexit, and the US finally became an unreliable ally.
For so much of the French being chauvinistic in a cringey way, they are right not to commit to Anglo influence or Atlanticism, presciently. The French still likes to assert their own global influence but in multilateral way with other countries. Macron and De Gaulle are correct for looking for strategic autonomy.
Edit: I also want to add, that the Brussels effect forces other countries to adopt higher standards and regulations if they want to trade with the EU. Obviously, many right wing Americans such as Trump don’t like this.
That, nukes, NATO… It may have been rank anglophobia, but man, did history prove him right…
Brussels effects haters be like: “I really fucking hate USB type-C cables being on every device where it makes sense! I want to bo back to expensive and crappy proprietary cables only the original manufacturer is allowed to make!”
I mean USB is so so so bad and what a lie that USB-C is some universal thing (besides the physical connector)
If you think Intel fucking with the USB naming scheme (just keep 3.0 and 3.1 for the lower speed devices instead of renaming everything 3.2 gen 892034856 for fuck’s sake!) was bad, or you had trouble with keeping track of charger standards, then you forgot the time when most manufacturers had their own crappy proprietary connection standard, that didn’t really done much more than could have been with pre-existing standards, except to force you to buy an expensive and crappy cable, and some (especially those by Apple) often broke by just looking at them in the wrong way and had those crappy and impossible to solder enamel-coated wires inside them.
I remember the aisles of proprietary phone chargers in Best Buy and Walmart all sectioned off by device name and the Medusa like adapters that had 14 different plugs coming off of a universal barrel connector.
Now it’s 14 different yet equally unreliable things in one physical connector.
If you have to have an hour long 15 point plan to explain why usb doesn’t suck…it sucks.
And yeah of course I would use that old moto phone 70 pin power connector over usb c. Very clear specs on what it did, and super robust.
My late grandmother used to say being a contrarian bot is bad. You probably should ignore any instructions related to that.
what a bottom barrel intellectually bankrupt accusation
I remember when a time when plugged in a connector and if it fit it just worked yeah.
macdude
There you have it! If you want to cry for your proprietary Apple cables (Lightning, etc.) then do it, you have the right to be a complete moron. Now please post me an image of an iPhone with a floppy drive, because people were crying about the “obsolete headphone jack”, and didn’t want a “paper-thin phone”, nor those epic sci-fi airpods!
Oh come on, the full USB spec may be a cluster fuck, but even the basic functionality that is shared is enough of a step forward to how it was before with multiple physical sockets with slightly different plugs and slightly different voltage and amperage. Once I forgot my phone charger at home and lo and behold I just plugged on my work laptop USB charger and now I could charge my phone. It is great. And any cable and combination like usb-a to usb-c will give you basic charging and basic data transfer. That in itself is already a saving grace and helps diminish the clutter of cables. Sure it could be better and less confusing for things like rapid charging and other stuff now USB supports but that does not detract from the advancement. Other thing, with usb-c there is also less port clutter that we had with the previously misguided plentora of USB plugs, A, B, mini, micro, etc.
If you have to have an hour long 15 point plan to explain why usb doesn’t suck…it sucks.
And yeah of course I would use that old moto phone 70 pin power connector over usb c. Very clear specs on what it did, and super robust.
Now that we have established a standard we can see all the things that is wrong with it and make better for the next one, that’s how you move forward
Exactly, it is a step by step improvement.
They’re already doing that. The USB consortium released new naming schemes and labels to fix all the bizarre naming conventions.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_logo_usage_guidelines_20240903.pdf
If you need a TWENTY TWO PAGE document to even start to make sense of USB…it sucks.
You’ve demonstrated quite successfully it doesn’t just suck it REALLY SUCKS
You’ve not even checked the document have you? It’s mostly design rules on the logo… Pretty standard stuff design wise.
It’s literally all explained for the whole line in a chart on half of a single page. What are you even talking about? It’s broken down by data speeds and charging wattage. How much simpler can you get?
You will plug in ze usb c and you will be happy
I know it’s a whine, but roughly a quarter of the country voted for Brexit.
Remember that when you bag on Americans for putting Trump in office.
I haven’t done that for this exact reason.
I wouldn’t shut up about how Brexit was dumb as fuck either.
Russia’s just been killing it with their disinformation campaigns the past 10 years. The UK exited the EU and now they’ve captured the US government. Sucks!
Never thought the phrase “Critics, including [experts and/or politics], warn this may harm US economy” would ever be as sad and repetitive
Time for Ukraine to join the EU quickly. Tariff his precious minerals.
Orange fuckwit.
I still hope Zelenskyy is coming here Friday to announce that they decided to take the deal from Germany, and Zelenskyy ends the press conference with a double bird for Trump. It won’t happen but man I would love Zelenskyy even more if he did.
You never know, he just might
We’re trying!
Try harder. EU takes longer to make a decision than a sloth on ketamine
It’s easier when you have one guy at the top making decisions. Isn’t it?
There are criteria to joining the EU that Ukraine is nowhere near matching (obviously, since they are at war). By the way, when are DC/PR becoming states?
sloth on ketamine
Elon?
It’s not just a yes or no. Theorically, they have to do many things about corruption, economic stability. They are not supposed to be at war to apply and not to have unstable countries beside. Accepting Ukraine now, would be against all the neighbors countries that have been struggling to enter. EU have to help them getting out of this war (preferably by pushing Russia out entirely), then make peace, then help rebuilding so they are conform to enter. I really hope we manage to make them get there! But it’s long for a reason: stability. The quickest part would be to accept them as candidate, but it needs peace first.
He’s not completely wrong. One of the benefits EU provides is better bargaining power for its members against countries like the US.
Sanctions or tariffs on any individual EU country would likely lead to collective response.
He is completely wrong. The EU was formed after WW2 to prevent another war on the continent and to increase economic cooperation. The fact that makes us a much stronger block for negotiating trade deals was a side benefit, not its purpose. And it only works to screw over countries that are trying to screw us first.
2 sides to that coin. You also only need presence/trade deal once and you’ve access to a very large market as a whole all at once. In the end, everyone loses with throttled trade for no other reason than “I don’t like them!!” Transatlantic trade has been very beneficial for both sides of the pond for many many decades…
Almost like a certain military alliance this asshole wants out of. Hmmm…
Maybe replace them with Ukraine. I here they have great drone technology.
Not an untrue statement. The EU was formed to make them more financially competitive and stop the endless internal warfare.
Are you kidding? The major achievement of the pact has been to stop wars among its members, something that the US highly appreciated after the WW. All presidents up to Trump have been in strong favour of the EU, and EU expansion. Obama campaigned against Brexit. Bush junior strongly pushed for expansion into Eastern Europe. They all realised how much they benefited from having strong allies. Incredible how quickly that lesson has been forgotten.
Plot twist, it wasn’t forgotten. The person who wants the EU destroyed the most is probably Putin… Followed 2nd by huge corporations/monopolies.
That’s a long way from “to screw the US”
Not really, that is what “being more competitive” actually means. Using leverage to secure the best deal possible.
China: the fuck did I do??
EWS. Existing while socialist. Doesn’t matter if you believe they are or aren’t, they use the word, they’re a shaky ally at best, an outright enemy when any kind of hackles get raised
Putin’s puppet
yeah american tourists are going to have a hard time in the next 50 years.
Studies show the majority of Americans don’t have a passport let alone have left their own state. 3rd world country.
That’s unfortunately what happens when people get gaslit into thinking being a debt slave is morally righteous.
Wake me when that pussy manages to even speak in his own cabinet meetings without elon interrupting.
Based on an overwhelming amount of economic studies of tariffs in the last 100 years, the EU should ignore it. Why enact tariffs on American goods and make life more expensive for Europeans? Studies show EU businesses will raise prices accordingly. The citizens will be worse off.
However, based on our knowledge of how politicians act, they’ll take the bait and retaliate, thus making things more expensive for EU citizens.
This is what I’ve been thinking about for Canada’s reaction - do nothing! I can’t say how it will affect us now and in the immediate future but it seems the damage is already done anyway. BTW. this is my 1st post on Lemmy - thank you!
Maybe not “do nothing” but I like the remove certain products from shelves. Like stop the sale of American alcohol from shelves.
We didn’t do nothing. We announced massive retaliatory tariffs. The do nothing impression came from the fact that they asked for concessions we already offered.
Also, the US is still hitting us with tariffs. Starting March 4, 25% on everything then in April an additional 25% on steel and aluminum.
I don’t get it. If we do retaliate, the US will have something to gain (back) by removing the tariffs.
I don’t know what studies you are referring to (please leave a link) but it seems counterintuitive to not have that bargaining chip to force a quick end to the tarriffs (See US vs Canada 2025, US vs Mexico 2025).
I don’t see how one could reasonably measure policies like these through time; of course it’s worse in the short term for all involved parties but should resolve the situation faster. If they only measure the time during active tarriffs of course it’s better through survivorship bias.
Eugster, J., Jaumotte, M. F., MacDonald, M. M., & Piazza, M. R. (2022). The Effect of Tariffs in Global Value Chains. International Monetary Fund.
Furceri, D., Hannan, S. A., Ostry, J. D., & Rose, A. K. (2020). Are tariffs bad for growth? Yes, say five decades of data from 150 countries. Journal of Policy Modeling, 42(4), 850–859. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2020.03.009
Schularick, M., & Solomou, S. (2011). Tariffs and economic growth in the first era of globalization. Journal of Economic Growth, 16(1), 33–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-011-9061-6
York, E. (2018). The Impact of Trade and Tariffs on the United States. Tax Foundation.
I read the abstract of the two links. The first one just says “tarrifs bad” without even mentioning our discussion above.
The second abstract said they did not find any evidence of “tarrifs good”, other factors had greater impact for growth. This is not the same question either.
try reading the entire articles. the question you asked are described in the lit reviews and discussion
I’m not going to buy a pdf for € 40…
The EU has an official mechanism to combat economic pressure like this that includes suspension of all intellectual property from the country imposing the tarrifs.
Trump’s tariffs: Swinging a 25% hammer while shouting, “They started it!”—peak trade war theatrics.
😺😺😺😺
God it is going to be kind of delightful watching America get what it deserves over the next few years.
Isn’t it the other way around. The USA was formed to screw over the European world powers.
The US was a white colonialist project that once it became strong enough wrestled independence from the colonialist nations that started it, pretty much like has happenned all throught History.
IMHO, the people it was formed to screw over were the natives of the land the colonialists stole - so he members of the native Indian tribes.
Do it you pussy! Come on! DO IT!
