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.
reverse engineering -everything-technological- was a national/state-funded (amateur and also professional) sport not so long ago, in quite a few countries around..
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
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.
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 want others to let bygones be bygones because it is normalized and maintains the status quo.
Not letting bygones be bygones, but rather addressing them in a constructive context - where they might even be able to be concretely addressed rather than simply used as fuel for the fire and then dumped in the dustbin of history.
Yes, that is maintaining the status quo. And yes, that is awfully convenient as an American. I'll admit those biases. But even as a critic of US foreign policy for basically my entire life, I do feel there is still something independently-valuable in the post-WWII international order where we at least tried to move beyond overt large-scale aggression.
Defining it as "west vs the rest" is too binary, even if you're coming from a place of being content to see the rest of the west get their comeuppance. Don't you think Gaza is worse off with this new more fair approach? Venezuela?
As a heavily sarcastic and often irreverent person myself, I think sarcasm translates very poorly to online communication in public forums. The main problem is the complete lack of context where you don't know where a commenter is actually coming from, so you lack the ability to interpret them making a particular statement as a deliberate absurdity.
So sure, maybe talking to friends I would find myself using the word "fair" that way as a punchline to a joke. But they'd know I'm not looking to normalize the new dynamic, rather than highlighting its perversity.
Then specifically here, OP doubled down on the argument rather than repudiating it. So I don't think it's really correct to call it sarcasm.
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.
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?
If you'd like to understand, there are two things here.
The first is the primary system. Most people inclined to see Trump as extra-bad were prohibited from voting in the Republican primaries, as they were voting in the Democratic primaries (or even worse, because they weren't registered Republicans in states without "open primaries").
The second is that everyone was basically bored and upset with mainstream status-quo politicians. The Republican party specifically had been growing and grooming the monster that would become Trumpism for decades on reactionary talk radio. They'd get people all riled up about immigration, globalism, racial tension, sellout politicians, etc. But then they'd cool them down enough to show up and vote for more status quo Republicans on a vague remnant feeling of Republicans being "better". If you want some discrete datapoints to see the progression of this monster manifesting in popular politics: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul [0], the Tea Party.
Trump, the New York con artist Democrat, basically just channeled and took personal ownership of all of that reactionary tripe - "saying the quiet part out loud". So how could Rubio defend against that? Rubio was likely often a target of that reactionary talk radio for failing to take some hardline stance, in favor of the pragmatic American status quo.
And so here we are, an entire tribe of the country with no idea how the country actually functioned or what made us a world leader, frustrated and now overrunning the place as an angry mob hell bent on destroying anything they don't understand, which is everything.
[0] I myself was a Ron Paul supporter, but I have to be honest and admit that the energy behind him - rather than staying true to "right-Libertarianism" fundamentalism - transformed into the simplistic populist answers of the Tea Party.
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.
You are severely underestimating India within this context. In fact one of the benefits of Silicon Valley for America was that Indians used to believe in an American Dream and the SV Venture capitals could provide a better salary for developers.
But this is because of American dollar (formerly) being the de-facto currency which made the currency strong in value & this made investments especially within S&P and VC money(as more & more VC funded companies ended up on shelfs on S&P and nasdaq)
So the amount of money flowing in America was like a river and we went there and helped because I do feel like most Indian coders are more liberal (yes even if there have been times of racism)
But after ICE attacks & H1B hikes to a million $ and children of people not recieving citizenship, Indian Coders will prefer to stay in India and focus more on the startup culture within India (banagalore, gurgaon,ahmedabad etc.)
Indian Coding tests for colleges are hard and the premise of American dream was that Kids wouldn't have to study within the hyper competitive environment as well but at this point, we don't know if the kids would be able to stay safe in the first context as well. (I saw videos of ICE online where they targeted brown/black kids like wtf??)
I will be the first to admit that India's research programs are ass so much of our researchers in context of AI are in America or Europe but the ties between Europe are gonna get stronger & we might get ourselves better research programs in near future.
On the other hand China's research programs are excellent so they are able to dominate AI space in this context.
But rest assured, I do feel like India can dominate/play catch up.
India EU deal is also being signed (in the process) & India recently slashed any tax on angel investing and Indian startups are tax free for 2-3 years and India is opening up cities specifically for technology hubs. India also doesn't tax foreign income & India's startup culture is robust.
So what was the issue? Lack of funding. For an idea which could garner 1 million $ in America, we might only be able to get 100_000$ but as more and more countries and institutional investments move further from America (See you are thinking only Europe will move but the world is seeing not just Europe seeing America make aggressions towards another sovereign country)
I do like to dunk on my indian govt. but I do feel like they are very much understandable within this context and chill.
Now some people might think we might still use AWS,GCP etc. but rest be assured any new startups will probably evaluate Hetzner,OVH,scaleway (which in many cases are cheaper than these cloud providers as well in the first place) plus it gives easier EU connection in the future with laws like GDPR.
I predict India Estonia relations are gonna rise and we are gonna see a witness in EU companies built in Estonia (which supports e-residents and company formation without travelling/living there for around 200-300$) in the near future as well.
India has UPI which I will have to admit is such a beauty to use & transact and even street vendors got UPI which could've been unthinkable a decade ago. My brother was actually on a team in his college to try to create diplomatic relations between India and London to create UPI test pilots there and I do feel like UPI and SEPA integration could deeply financially involve the two alliances together.
Best of all is that India's much more neutral and non alignment policy than America & We have a policy (both at a national/state to even a more household idea) of peace and welcoming neighbours.
Did you know that USSR and China had bicker (two countries which were aligned together) and USA then decided to connect with China (effecitvely establishing free trade zones setting up factories) which has now made China grow into (I must admit even though its scary for the borders, a key global play)
You would be surprised by how quickly America and China integrated.
Now US and EU have a falling out and you see Indian tech with all factors just saying hello and winking at EU which has good capital funding. The subtext is probably clear but the fact of the matter is that India has some great potential (largest population which is unemployed, if you spin up enough colleges with good degrees and teach effectively and filter out the people interested in tech than those who aren't) Our tests aren't built in such a way tho but I do hope that India pivots in this context but overall, Its still pretty optimistic and India has been one of the fastest growing countries.
I don't think Europe will just survive without American tech, it might actually thrive given that I think Indian tech companies will focus on the home brand in home and with PPP, we will probably pricen things out less (comparatively to America) even for the American customers.
It's just not even about India. Of course I am biased here but I can try to provide as much facts on the details if you want because I have detailed extensively about this as its literally the intersection of every interest I have (geopolitics & tech)
Funny thing is that AI might actually help Indians more than people think too. We are more likely to be able to just record our speech in whatever we want and there are tools which are literally live which can understand context and just modify the accent to be better understood if accent struggles + we might see closed captions and other contexts as well & my brother works in Coding industry and AI agents are used extensively & America went from giving 100_000$ salaries to 200$ coding models (talking about the best of best CC here for dev context, we are also gonna witness China catch up in here and provide things for cheaper but great quality too, For context GLM's z ai is head to head with claude in many things and costs 10x less)
Once again I have my bias and feel free to discredit it if it inconveniences ya.
But atleast the philosophy I am moving with (and I hope india does too) is to keep a sharp focus on being the best & price effective too & get external funding within the country. We are non aligned and we don't want to fall into many controversies that much & we are just doing our own thing and I must admit, we are getting pretty good at it.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
Whitelands or Anglosphere will always be cooperating and coordinating because blood is thicker than water. So all these developments of Canada moving closer to China are superficial. When push comes to shove, the real affinities or allegiances will be revealed, ie the anglosphere will stick together.
So you think that the Canadians or the Danish love you for your skin color(?) but you don't do the same, and just threaten them and take their lands? This doesn't make any sense.
When Carlin asks about the last white people America bombed, he answers his own question: the Germans, and specifically notes they're "the only ones."
But here's the key part of his argument: America didn't bomb Germany for moral reasons or because they were evil - we bombed them because "they were trying to cut in on our action. They wanted to dominate the world."
His punchline: "Fuck that, that's our fucking job."
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.
You might want to check some reliable sources about how the war is going for Ukraine, because it seems like you think they are kicking some Russian bootie, which is simply not the case. Take the US (and risk of mutual worldwide nuclear contamination) out of the equation and Ukraine would be in even worse shape.
> because it seems like you think they are kicking some Russian bootie,
This seems like quite the assumption.
It is generally a mistake to attempt telepathy/IP.
Russia not doing nearly as well as one might expect for an aging out core of a former superpower is not an equivilance with their target is kicking their arse.
The grind Russia is having to go through against Ukraine is an indicator of how it might fare against a full NATO (sans the US).
".. 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.
One of the issues I have with this is that a Weaker America does mean a better China and the reasons I have been vocal is that this doesn't have to do much with America itself but rather the fact that we need a multi polarized world in first place with (I think) policies of non alighnment because Europe aligned itself to US for the most part, its coming so much as a shock-wave in the first place.
A stronger China does mean more micro-agressions towards Asean countries in general (japan,south korea,India) and QUAD members (minus the united states) so it would be beneficial if the EU block could align itself with the members of Asean who still align with democratic ideals and similar.
This is probably why most countries officials (or people interested in geopolitics) are on the edge of their seats
A better China, or stronger China, would likely look like China as a trading powerhouse dominating Atlas of Economic Complexity rankings globally, exerting greater control over the bottleneck of China Sea through which almost all its inbound and outbound goods traverse.
It's unlikely (but possible) to see it flex as a global military powerhouse in the same manner as other great empires have done in the past - but it is probable that china will continue to extract "water resources" as food from Africa and elsewhere as it, the Saudi's, and others already do .. in China's case with the backing of its own mercanaries and with US mercanaries (they were hiring Erik Prince and Blackwater not so long ago).
This is a pattern the world has seen before - great powers come and go, meridans and global financial centres have moved before and will move again.
Yes, there has been an uneasy peace of sorts for 75 years or so, do be aware of and prepared for transitions.
Not sure if its the number of parties that is the primary issue. Corporate lobbying, campaign finance, bribery, and cultural distractions (intended to posit groups against each other) are some areas that concern me more.
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?
This post seems to be weirdly censored by HN. It got immediate traction, when it briefly hit the frontpage, yesterday.
Since then, I reliably cannot find it coming from the frontpage (or 15 pages in). It's not flagged/dead, got quite a lot of upvotes, obviously, the topic is popular and highly relevant across industries as major inflection point for US-EU relations. Never noticed anything like that on HN.
However, the weird thing is, I somehow still observe new human participants finding their way in (through votes and comments).
So, HN is presumably heavily interfering with traffic and visibility on this one.
This post is ranked 7th in /active, now. Quickly cross-checking /active and /news, I've found no other post in /active not visible in /news. It went from 100 to 200 points, since I noticed the delisting. /active is an obscure list, I doubt, that's how many people find this post.
Whatever HN is doing, it seems to be completely intransparent and selective. Some A/B-ing, or geofencing. In any case, questionable and manipulative. Like they are trying to hide interference and engineer popularity/engagement to whatever end.
And you have to wonder, if this has anything to do with the fact this particular political move seems to have greatly backfired on every possible axis, apparently even within the conservative and MAGA base. May turn out as exceptionally stupid, especially before midterms. I've seen impeachment calls in /r/conservative (lol), and they are usually an extension of Trumps digestive system. Diplomacy with Europe is basically dead, France wants to trigger the EU's extortion clause and it's a sunday.
If it’s “gone” then it’s because too many users flagged it. You can turn on “showdead” in your profile to see them again. It isn’t done covertly. You can email hn@ycombinator.com about specific posts to get an explanation.
So it’s not actually gone? Again, instead of speculating, send an email if something is unclear. Yes, moderation is purposefully selective, but not based on political agenda. Dang has repeatedly explained moderation policy in the past.
> 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
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.
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?
That's happening all over Europe but very quietly. The thing to watch is earnings reports of Q1 2027, that's when these chickens will come home to roost. Lots of contracts renew at the end of the year, or not...
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.
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.
You think Denmark is not the US’s ally? They would happily cook up an angle but there is absolutely no world where that angle involves selling Greenland and that appears to be the only result Trump will accept, presumably so he can go down in history as the first President to expand the United States in a long time.
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.
It’s repeated over the last several centuries with similar players. Not sure there was a Germany before Freddy the Great. Austria was different and had different concerns.
Prussia and Britain defeated France, Austria and Russia in the 1700’s. Prussia and Britain defeated France in the 1800’s. Germany then threw away this association to catastrophic results in the 1900’s. The US is doing such dissociation now.
> 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 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.
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?
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.
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?
Would you say the US government is acting with “caution” regarding a country (not their country) of 57,000 “stressed-out” people who don’t want to be acquired?
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).
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.
Yes, countries are not monolithic entities. Such generalized statements don’t really mean much and don’t convey much. I doubt whether you know what self interest “China” is interested in as it would depend on context. I prefer statements like the leadership of China or the people of China or the military industrial complex of China or the Uighyrs of China. Even better it would be to provide accurate polls of the groups to determine what their self interest actually are. I think you would agree that all of these groups have different priorities and therefore different self interest.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
Because most European countries are US vassals. They have US bases on their soil. What kind of a sovereign nation will allow another country's military on their ground??
That means at the end of the day they will bitch and moan but eventually they will do what US tells them to do. Otherwise they'll get the same medicine that Libya, Iraq, etc etc has received for disobedience.
Most countries are ok with foreign troops if they are friendly and there to oppose a common enemy, basically Russia in the case of Europe. Europe doesn't fit the normal definition for vassal state.
It's unlikely the US will do a Libya on Europe. I think we'll probably just wait for Krasnov to pass.
I liked this bit by Doctorow recently https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
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.
Except that increasingly, pro-US is looking a lot less like pro-stability. People forget that nationalism doesn’t have to have a right-wing flavour.
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.
reverse engineering -everything-technological- was a national/state-funded (amateur and also professional) sport not so long ago, in quite a few countries around..
Related: EU-US trade deal 'on hold' after new Trump tariffs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46662068
> The EU's ... Anti-Coercion Instrument, offers a range of punitive measures ... Among them are ... limits on intellectual property protections.
> Let French engineers sell jailbreaking hardware
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.
> That infrastructure exists since year 2000. Called chiptuning tools,
Sure, but it's a crime to provide these tools to people or instruct them how to bypass controls, is it not?
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.
If it is a crime, then chip tunning companies are having suicidally noisy marketing.
Furthermore one of HN users has this repo up https://github.com/bri3d/VW_Flash
It is doing what chip tunning companies are doing but in less polished package. If it is a crime, why is it still up?
> 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].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-richest-man-lvmhs-arna...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2023/08/07/how-be...
[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-05/lvmh-s-ar...
[3] - https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-et-idees/dossier/la...
[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/9b3d057c-16cc-4ab9-93bb-ed82c9ca5...
[5] - https://www.ft.com/content/cc06031c-f4a9-45db-ba3a-a3a23404b...
[6] - https://www.euractiv.com/news/exclusive-eu-india-trade-deal-...
[7] - https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/06/can...
[8] - https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/-wyden-and-cra...
> Because that means we may as well quasi-nationalize [...]
I'm not quite sure how you get from IP law abrogation to 'quasi-nationalization', care to explain your reasoning here ?
> 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].
[0] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/12/18/emmanu...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/frances-richest-man-lvmhs-arna...
[2] - https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240627-how-the-french-m...
[3] - https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-et-idees/dossier/la...
[4] - https://rsf.org/fr/derri%C3%A8re-la-campagne-de-d%C3%A9sinfo...
> He already has. He's the reason Elisabeth Borne is no longer the PM [0]. And his rival Bolloré is the reason why the RN is at the cusp of power [1]
all before the US went completely off the rails
even the AfD are now distancing themselves from the US regime
> all before the US went full retard
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]
[0] - https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2025/03/08/les-medi...
[1] - https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2025/03/11/attaque-...
[2] - https://www.streetpress.com/sujet/1741019147-bollore-embauch...
[3] - https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/trump-e-arnault-antico-legam...
[4] - https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2025/03/03/comment-...
[5] - https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2025/03/14/l-administ...
[6] - https://www.ft.com/content/cb1cc264-84b9-40da-a484-ff897cd38...
[7] - https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/politik/drohnen...
[8] - https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-will-not-send-soldiers-...
[9] - https://china-cee.eu/2026/01/15/poland-monthly-briefing-karo...
[10] - https://www.economist.com/china/2025/11/17/europe-sees-china...
you'd think a "VC" would be aware of the concept of "past performance is no guarantee of future returns"
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.
> As a Frenchman
whoa, there's no need to be offensive
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that would be a bad thing?
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.
Please stop spamming your LLM BS. Your machine generated source references takes up like 1.5 screenfuls in this thread.
I don't use LLMs.
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
I do it by hand. It's fairly easy.
> I'm always too lazy to do it for mine
No worries. We've all been there.
SGTM? :D
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.
Well, many jurisdictions copied or were pressured to adopt DMCA-like language, especially via trade agreements.
Modern, expansive, DMCA-style anticircumvention regime that now dominates global law can be said to originate from the US.
Where did the WIPO come from SpicyLemonZest? Where huh where? Honk
(It was shaped and driven by US and other big business interests.)
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.
Audience did paid for the ticket ("vote") to the show, though. As always: hire a clown, expect a circus.
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.
Totally bizarre to watch the US transform from the endearingly crazy and rich friend to the one who holds you at gunpoint and robs you.
Transforms. Look at history, they’ve always done that when convenient to them.
The first world is now getting the third world treatment
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.
So edgy, much wow.
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.
> I don't mean it as progress
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 want others to let bygones be bygones because it is normalized and maintains the status quo.
That's a really convenient position to take.
Not letting bygones be bygones, but rather addressing them in a constructive context - where they might even be able to be concretely addressed rather than simply used as fuel for the fire and then dumped in the dustbin of history.
Yes, that is maintaining the status quo. And yes, that is awfully convenient as an American. I'll admit those biases. But even as a critic of US foreign policy for basically my entire life, I do feel there is still something independently-valuable in the post-WWII international order where we at least tried to move beyond overt large-scale aggression.
Defining it as "west vs the rest" is too binary, even if you're coming from a place of being content to see the rest of the west get their comeuppance. Don't you think Gaza is worse off with this new more fair approach? Venezuela?
How about in a cynical sarcastic context? Do you think "fair" still has no place in it?
That's how I interpreted the original message anyway. I guess I still have hope, maybe foolishly, that people don't mean it literally.
As a heavily sarcastic and often irreverent person myself, I think sarcasm translates very poorly to online communication in public forums. The main problem is the complete lack of context where you don't know where a commenter is actually coming from, so you lack the ability to interpret them making a particular statement as a deliberate absurdity.
So sure, maybe talking to friends I would find myself using the word "fair" that way as a punchline to a joke. But they'd know I'm not looking to normalize the new dynamic, rather than highlighting its perversity.
Then specifically here, OP doubled down on the argument rather than repudiating it. So I don't think it's really correct to call it sarcasm.
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 :)
As resources become more scarce, tribalism emerges.
A tale as old as time, for those who have even the slightest education in history.
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.
Putin's asset, propped to dismantle the US and western alliances.
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.
To think Ted Cruz was partially on the money when he said in 2016 that "Donald might wake up one morning and nuke Denmark".
What has happened to the US...
Fox News happened.
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.
My similar take is that the edgy 4 Chan users were just kids who grew up in Fox viewing households.
They willed into existence the propaganda that had been bathing them since birth.
It's probably multiple factors at play.
Look up the pied piper "strategy" that Dems used to intentionally elevate Trump, exposed by wikileaks.
And social media. Trump is the social media president.
This. Mark Zuckerberg is uniquely responsible for this. World went to shit when he figured out how profitable it was to platform outrage.
Right wing media and Newt Gingrich have really done a number on this country.
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.
Fox news is also chill with their hosts calling for mass-extermination of undesirables on their channel. That is mainstream right wing in 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYOrM3SNV8
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?
If you'd like to understand, there are two things here.
The first is the primary system. Most people inclined to see Trump as extra-bad were prohibited from voting in the Republican primaries, as they were voting in the Democratic primaries (or even worse, because they weren't registered Republicans in states without "open primaries").
The second is that everyone was basically bored and upset with mainstream status-quo politicians. The Republican party specifically had been growing and grooming the monster that would become Trumpism for decades on reactionary talk radio. They'd get people all riled up about immigration, globalism, racial tension, sellout politicians, etc. But then they'd cool them down enough to show up and vote for more status quo Republicans on a vague remnant feeling of Republicans being "better". If you want some discrete datapoints to see the progression of this monster manifesting in popular politics: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul [0], the Tea Party.
Trump, the New York con artist Democrat, basically just channeled and took personal ownership of all of that reactionary tripe - "saying the quiet part out loud". So how could Rubio defend against that? Rubio was likely often a target of that reactionary talk radio for failing to take some hardline stance, in favor of the pragmatic American status quo.
And so here we are, an entire tribe of the country with no idea how the country actually functioned or what made us a world leader, frustrated and now overrunning the place as an angry mob hell bent on destroying anything they don't understand, which is everything.
[0] I myself was a Ron Paul supporter, but I have to be honest and admit that the energy behind him - rather than staying true to "right-Libertarianism" fundamentalism - transformed into the simplistic populist answers of the Tea Party.
It's about time for EU to put 50% tax on American digital services, and get rid of all Microsoft products in public sector.
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.
Let’s see Europe survive without American tech
Which particular tech are you thinking of?
Google search, all social media, every LLM, etc
Yes, please.
You are severely underestimating India within this context. In fact one of the benefits of Silicon Valley for America was that Indians used to believe in an American Dream and the SV Venture capitals could provide a better salary for developers.
But this is because of American dollar (formerly) being the de-facto currency which made the currency strong in value & this made investments especially within S&P and VC money(as more & more VC funded companies ended up on shelfs on S&P and nasdaq)
So the amount of money flowing in America was like a river and we went there and helped because I do feel like most Indian coders are more liberal (yes even if there have been times of racism)
But after ICE attacks & H1B hikes to a million $ and children of people not recieving citizenship, Indian Coders will prefer to stay in India and focus more on the startup culture within India (banagalore, gurgaon,ahmedabad etc.)
Indian Coding tests for colleges are hard and the premise of American dream was that Kids wouldn't have to study within the hyper competitive environment as well but at this point, we don't know if the kids would be able to stay safe in the first context as well. (I saw videos of ICE online where they targeted brown/black kids like wtf??)
I will be the first to admit that India's research programs are ass so much of our researchers in context of AI are in America or Europe but the ties between Europe are gonna get stronger & we might get ourselves better research programs in near future.
On the other hand China's research programs are excellent so they are able to dominate AI space in this context.
But rest assured, I do feel like India can dominate/play catch up.
India EU deal is also being signed (in the process) & India recently slashed any tax on angel investing and Indian startups are tax free for 2-3 years and India is opening up cities specifically for technology hubs. India also doesn't tax foreign income & India's startup culture is robust.
So what was the issue? Lack of funding. For an idea which could garner 1 million $ in America, we might only be able to get 100_000$ but as more and more countries and institutional investments move further from America (See you are thinking only Europe will move but the world is seeing not just Europe seeing America make aggressions towards another sovereign country)
I do like to dunk on my indian govt. but I do feel like they are very much understandable within this context and chill.
Now some people might think we might still use AWS,GCP etc. but rest be assured any new startups will probably evaluate Hetzner,OVH,scaleway (which in many cases are cheaper than these cloud providers as well in the first place) plus it gives easier EU connection in the future with laws like GDPR.
I predict India Estonia relations are gonna rise and we are gonna see a witness in EU companies built in Estonia (which supports e-residents and company formation without travelling/living there for around 200-300$) in the near future as well.
India has UPI which I will have to admit is such a beauty to use & transact and even street vendors got UPI which could've been unthinkable a decade ago. My brother was actually on a team in his college to try to create diplomatic relations between India and London to create UPI test pilots there and I do feel like UPI and SEPA integration could deeply financially involve the two alliances together.
Best of all is that India's much more neutral and non alignment policy than America & We have a policy (both at a national/state to even a more household idea) of peace and welcoming neighbours.
Did you know that USSR and China had bicker (two countries which were aligned together) and USA then decided to connect with China (effecitvely establishing free trade zones setting up factories) which has now made China grow into (I must admit even though its scary for the borders, a key global play)
You would be surprised by how quickly America and China integrated.
Now US and EU have a falling out and you see Indian tech with all factors just saying hello and winking at EU which has good capital funding. The subtext is probably clear but the fact of the matter is that India has some great potential (largest population which is unemployed, if you spin up enough colleges with good degrees and teach effectively and filter out the people interested in tech than those who aren't) Our tests aren't built in such a way tho but I do hope that India pivots in this context but overall, Its still pretty optimistic and India has been one of the fastest growing countries.
I don't think Europe will just survive without American tech, it might actually thrive given that I think Indian tech companies will focus on the home brand in home and with PPP, we will probably pricen things out less (comparatively to America) even for the American customers.
It's just not even about India. Of course I am biased here but I can try to provide as much facts on the details if you want because I have detailed extensively about this as its literally the intersection of every interest I have (geopolitics & tech)
Funny thing is that AI might actually help Indians more than people think too. We are more likely to be able to just record our speech in whatever we want and there are tools which are literally live which can understand context and just modify the accent to be better understood if accent struggles + we might see closed captions and other contexts as well & my brother works in Coding industry and AI agents are used extensively & America went from giving 100_000$ salaries to 200$ coding models (talking about the best of best CC here for dev context, we are also gonna witness China catch up in here and provide things for cheaper but great quality too, For context GLM's z ai is head to head with claude in many things and costs 10x less)
Once again I have my bias and feel free to discredit it if it inconveniences ya.
But atleast the philosophy I am moving with (and I hope india does too) is to keep a sharp focus on being the best & price effective too & get external funding within the country. We are non aligned and we don't want to fall into many controversies that much & we are just doing our own thing and I must admit, we are getting pretty good at it.
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.
> The US will never be trusted or even respected again, not any time soon.
not until the US fundamentally changes its political system such that this type of capture can't happen again
which short of a civil war, I can't see happening
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.
Which, to be fair, makes total sense.
> 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.
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
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.
Whitelands or Anglosphere will always be cooperating and coordinating because blood is thicker than water. So all these developments of Canada moving closer to China are superficial. When push comes to shove, the real affinities or allegiances will be revealed, ie the anglosphere will stick together.
So you think that the Canadians or the Danish love you for your skin color(?) but you don't do the same, and just threaten them and take their lands? This doesn't make any sense.
Yes, its not like white people would start world wars fighting each other or anything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z07v-ttoJZs
When Carlin asks about the last white people America bombed, he answers his own question: the Germans, and specifically notes they're "the only ones." But here's the key part of his argument: America didn't bomb Germany for moral reasons or because they were evil - we bombed them because "they were trying to cut in on our action. They wanted to dominate the world." His punchline: "Fuck that, that's our fucking job."
This is great news, though a higher percentage would be welcome. The sooner Europe rips off the bandaid, the better.
I'm not sure how it's great news? I miss they days when the US didn't behave like Russia.
Europe waking up would even be good for the US long term. The US has coasted on success and grown fat on lack of competition.
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.
>> Europe waking up would even be good for the US long term.
> "Things are going to be so much better when we needlessly make them shittier."
I don’t think Europe becoming more competitive would make things shittier at all. Why do you think that?
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'.
So they will make the paperwork to ship from an EU country that doesn’t face the extra tariffs? EU is a single market. That’s the whole point of EU.
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.
> Nope, you form a company in Italy and sell your goods you produce in France to that company.
Ah, that would indeed be entirely different. Not as quick to get going through.
And so what? The rule of law hardly seems to matter any more.
Point taken...
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.
The EU is the more reasonable actor here. Making a reactionary move, even one that would feel good, wouldn't be the best move.
The USA is in the process of systematically demolishing it's soft power around the world.
The EU is like a super tanker that takes a long time turning and, make no mistake, it is turning away from the USA.
The push back will be felt for years and decades.
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.
Large fractions inside the EP have already said that they won't sign the new US-EU trade deal next week:
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-us-trade-deal-on-hold-aft...
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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Coercion_Instrument
they can't back down on this one
if the moron continues, we will go to the brink
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.
I don't think they could win at all, but Putin has proven that he can convince himself otherwise so an invasion might still happen.
Old junk? Drones are old junk? Do you even understand what a full scale war with Russia entails? Total annihilation of Europe for starters.
I guess your position is that Russia is not at "full scale war" with Ukraine then.
Currently that entails "large drone attacks" that kill two and injure dozens.
That's a little short of the full scale war Russia could wield in WWI and WWII.
You might want to check some reliable sources about how the war is going for Ukraine, because it seems like you think they are kicking some Russian bootie, which is simply not the case. Take the US (and risk of mutual worldwide nuclear contamination) out of the equation and Ukraine would be in even worse shape.
> because it seems like you think they are kicking some Russian bootie,
This seems like quite the assumption.
It is generally a mistake to attempt telepathy/IP.
Russia not doing nearly as well as one might expect for an aging out core of a former superpower is not an equivilance with their target is kicking their arse.
The grind Russia is having to go through against Ukraine is an indicator of how it might fare against a full NATO (sans the US).
For a supposed superpower they are doing very badly
".. 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
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.
A vassal of who's empire?
Leftists can go eat shit. They spent over a year convincing people not to vote for Kamala. Their preferred candidate won!
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.
How long till you abandon the pathetic Democratic party? It's been 10 years since 2016. Or are you simply reduced to an anti-Trumper?
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
Like, I just want to take a moment here man
Like what the fuck is happening.
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.
~ Jan 17th, 2026 - https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-17-2026See also: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-16-2026 etc.
One of the issues I have with this is that a Weaker America does mean a better China and the reasons I have been vocal is that this doesn't have to do much with America itself but rather the fact that we need a multi polarized world in first place with (I think) policies of non alighnment because Europe aligned itself to US for the most part, its coming so much as a shock-wave in the first place.
A stronger China does mean more micro-agressions towards Asean countries in general (japan,south korea,India) and QUAD members (minus the united states) so it would be beneficial if the EU block could align itself with the members of Asean who still align with democratic ideals and similar.
This is probably why most countries officials (or people interested in geopolitics) are on the edge of their seats
A better China, or stronger China, would likely look like China as a trading powerhouse dominating Atlas of Economic Complexity rankings globally, exerting greater control over the bottleneck of China Sea through which almost all its inbound and outbound goods traverse.
It's unlikely (but possible) to see it flex as a global military powerhouse in the same manner as other great empires have done in the past - but it is probable that china will continue to extract "water resources" as food from Africa and elsewhere as it, the Saudi's, and others already do .. in China's case with the backing of its own mercanaries and with US mercanaries (they were hiring Erik Prince and Blackwater not so long ago).
This is a pattern the world has seen before - great powers come and go, meridans and global financial centres have moved before and will move again.
Yes, there has been an uneasy peace of sorts for 75 years or so, do be aware of and prepared for transitions.
Not sure if its the number of parties that is the primary issue. Corporate lobbying, campaign finance, bribery, and cultural distractions (intended to posit groups against each other) are some areas that concern me more.
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.
> can't functionally stand alone against Russia, US pressure, and Chinese economic infiltration / industrial replacement at the same time.
No country in the world can do that. That's not a consequence of 'they let their own defenses and industry rot for decades'.
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.
Great, but standing against Russia, the US and China at the same time? Come on.
FWIW I don't think they need to stand against China.
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 EU has a huge strategic problem because they let their own defenses and industry rot for decades
They also have a long history of being able to ramp it up quickly if necessary.
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.
Europe has, in no particular order:
- ASML
- Nukes
- Large proportion of US bonds
- One of the wealthiest and most profitable markets in the world
- The world's largest trade network - currently aggressively expanding into LatAm with the Mercosur deal despite Trump's Monroe 2.0 ambitions.
Just a few off the the top of my head. There's plenty leverage there.
ASML is also hostage as well.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/asml-gives-europe...
Although the articles also claims that "ASML has already started to reduce its dependence on American technology".
> 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.
---
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?
You can add the Swift payment system and the Euroclear and Clearstream clearing houses.
Also FATCA compliance.
> ASML
Who's the customer base of ASML? Are they predominantly based in Europe?
They are predominantly Taiwan, and South Korea.
This post seems to be weirdly censored by HN. It got immediate traction, when it briefly hit the frontpage, yesterday.
Since then, I reliably cannot find it coming from the frontpage (or 15 pages in). It's not flagged/dead, got quite a lot of upvotes, obviously, the topic is popular and highly relevant across industries as major inflection point for US-EU relations. Never noticed anything like that on HN.
However, the weird thing is, I somehow still observe new human participants finding their way in (through votes and comments).
So, HN is presumably heavily interfering with traffic and visibility on this one.
You can find active discussions here: https://news.ycombinator.com/active
(Including ones one flagged submissions)
Okay, but why isn't it visible in /news
This post is ranked 7th in /active, now. Quickly cross-checking /active and /news, I've found no other post in /active not visible in /news. It went from 100 to 200 points, since I noticed the delisting. /active is an obscure list, I doubt, that's how many people find this post.
Whatever HN is doing, it seems to be completely intransparent and selective. Some A/B-ing, or geofencing. In any case, questionable and manipulative. Like they are trying to hide interference and engineer popularity/engagement to whatever end.
And you have to wonder, if this has anything to do with the fact this particular political move seems to have greatly backfired on every possible axis, apparently even within the conservative and MAGA base. May turn out as exceptionally stupid, especially before midterms. I've seen impeachment calls in /r/conservative (lol), and they are usually an extension of Trumps digestive system. Diplomacy with Europe is basically dead, France wants to trigger the EU's extortion clause and it's a sunday.
Maaaybe there is active damage control going on.
HN moderation routinely demotes politically charged threads so that they don’t show at the top of the default front page all the time.
It's not demoted, for all I can tell, it's gone. In any case, pretty shady to do this covertly.
If it’s “gone” then it’s because too many users flagged it. You can turn on “showdead” in your profile to see them again. It isn’t done covertly. You can email hn@ycombinator.com about specific posts to get an explanation.
Have that option set. It's not marked flagged, or dead.
See, the weird thing is how quite many people found their way here after it got delisted.
So it’s not actually gone? Again, instead of speculating, send an email if something is unclear. Yes, moderation is purposefully selective, but not based on political agenda. Dang has repeatedly explained moderation policy in the past.
This blog post has some information: https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html
> 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
Me wonders how many millions of peasants he is ready to throw into the wood chipper to pay for this. Just kidding, of course I know it's all of them.
The US is shitting their pants and dancing around in it, enjoying the warmth. None of their former friends are gonna help clean up the mess.
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.
It was not easy.
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.
it's the same brilliant system that requires the current incumbent to certify their replacement
Lol … you think the president is in control.
Lol... he is in control, since he is the president... lol....
lol...
> Trump really did show that the US is built on the assumption that people in power will behave, basically a honor system.
> In so many other countries, Trump would face a no confidence vote. Snap elections.
US Congress could do many things. But Trump's party support him. Or fear his supporters would not vote for them in the next elections. Or fear worse.
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?
That's happening all over Europe but very quietly. The thing to watch is earnings reports of Q1 2027, that's when these chickens will come home to roost. Lots of contracts renew at the end of the year, or not...
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.
US was never a real democracy; it is a representative republic consisting of 2 primary parties both coopted by billionares.
Never thought I'd see NATO under such pressure in my lifetime.
Under those conditions, one could wonder if NATO is still actually a thing.
NATO is 32 countries with a Dutch guy as the head. Without the US there'd still be a lot of armed forces - infographic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/...
Mark Rutte is more of an administrator than truly the head of NATO. A spokesperson. NATO is a committee.
If a NATO country invades another NATO country, what do the other 30 countries do?
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.
Ask the US to stop it?
If the Europeans plus Canada want it to exist, it exists. Otherwise, yeah, scrap heap of history.
EU has it's own more robust defence agreement.
Can Canada join, or has it? Other non-EU countries?
I'm sure Canada could join Operation Arctic Endurance; has it yet?
How is it more robust? There is no EU army, is there?
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
There's no NATO army either.
Just check for “NATO troops”. That’s a term that exists and mean something.
It means something, but doesn't imply the existence of a NATO rmy
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.
> I am genuinely curious about what that agreement contains and how well it was respected in the past.
Easy enough to find[1]. Here[2] is a nice article which digs a bit deeper into how it might play out.
[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/mutual-d... (links to the treaty section if you want the text verbatim)
[2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/5-things-to-know-about-the-e...
> ok, but now we’re nit-picking about the meaning of “army”.
You started nitpicking...
We will soon discover if the EU actually as a spine or is just a bendover for the US...(My money is on the latter, and I'm from EU)
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
Poland was hardly a free pass. The Sudetenland was the free pass.
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.
I think you have a very poor understanding of European politics. Not even Meloni and Farage will get behind this sort of behaviour from the US.
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.
You think Denmark is not the US’s ally? They would happily cook up an angle but there is absolutely no world where that angle involves selling Greenland and that appears to be the only result Trump will accept, presumably so he can go down in history as the first President to expand the United States in a long time.
Denmark is US ally. But would you say Denmark is Trumps ally? Doesn't look like it.
What’s becoming clear to everyone is that nobody is Trump’s ally. Even Netanyahu discovered that this week.
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.
Wrong. Greenland has been an issue all the way back to the times of Seward in 1868.
Why stop there, let’s reconsider the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812.
Greenland has not been an issue in over 100 years.
Still wrong though.
> Europe cant afford to have enemies on both sides.
Well, Europe effectively has enemies on both sides right now.
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.
> Germany is used to that
Are you talking about a situation from a century ago?
It’s repeated over the last several centuries with similar players. Not sure there was a Germany before Freddy the Great. Austria was different and had different concerns.
Following Germany really paid off didn’t it?
Prussia and Britain defeated France, Austria and Russia in the 1700’s. Prussia and Britain defeated France in the 1800’s. Germany then threw away this association to catastrophic results in the 1900’s. The US is doing such dissociation now.
> 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 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.
Seems you forgot about these things called nuclear missiles.
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?
Russians will just sit back and let China and EU take their territory with no response? Seems like you forgot about the nukes.
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.
But would you trust the bat shit crazy US to protect you from Russia?
Sure, if I give them enough mineral resources in exchange. Current US is a thug running a protection racket lmao
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.
Indeed. As the US abandons it, the EU seemingly has no other choice than to find ways to align with Russia now.
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?
> “throw caution to the wind”
Would you say the US government is acting with “caution” regarding a country (not their country) of 57,000 “stressed-out” people who don’t want to be acquired?
The president isn’t, but what does that have to do with your decisions?
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).
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.
China is predictable, since they act in self intrest. No idea what the hell US is doing.
Self interests of whom? China is a diverse, huge country.
Every group is diverse. You want me to specify it to each individual?
China as a country of course, what else?
Yes, countries are not monolithic entities. Such generalized statements don’t really mean much and don’t convey much. I doubt whether you know what self interest “China” is interested in as it would depend on context. I prefer statements like the leadership of China or the people of China or the military industrial complex of China or the Uighyrs of China. Even better it would be to provide accurate polls of the groups to determine what their self interest actually are. I think you would agree that all of these groups have different priorities and therefore different self interest.
Those groups you mention are also not monolithic entities.
The more I read about it the more I think about Asabiyyah
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/world/europe/trump-greenl...
So what's the point? The guy in charge just can't ask nicely?
EDIT: I think the treaty is this one from 1951 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp
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.
Or California (most of western US) from Mexico. Or Florida from Spain. What’s left?
Most of the rest was grabbed from the rightful ownership of us British due to an unfortunate business of Spain and France conspiring with the rebels.
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.
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.
Can this be revoked after the midterms? In that case I guess the EU can wait it out.
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).
Supreme court cannot rule against all tariffs. Some tariffs will remain and adminstration can “reclassify”.
Though presumably they may require congressional approval for the tariffs?
If there are midterms.
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.
For those who think the US is too big to fail, the U.K. in 1900 was the leading economy in the world with an empire on which the sun never set.
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.
What kind of thinking do you mean?
> The UK was in 1900, and remains today, a prosperous country where almost all citizens can live happy and fulfilling lives.
I would not at all categorize the UK like that. But I do agree that what makes a country "great" is not territorial claims.
What a time to be (still) alive.
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.
Also the entire economy. Stocks are at an all time high on both sides of the Atlantic but the real world economy is struggling.
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.
Wasn't there some kind of military exercise around Greenland the other day? I assume these are the countries that participated?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arctic_Endurance
how I believe the tripwire would legally work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634146
And I think the Trump cabinet noticed, because they pivoted! (The actual analysis is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46630190 btw)
Edit: see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_Epidamnus#The_Atheni...
For that matter, if we're still doing WTO, I doubt their pivot to economic extortion falls under the safe-harbour of "justified trade measures"...
Sure if they want to chase away their tax revenue.
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).
What tax revenue ? Aren't they all declaring their profits in Ireland (a tax haven) ?
Why cut a deal with Trump?
Few months later he will throw a fit about something else and threaten tariffs…
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?
Yeah, it's crazy. Punishing Europe by increasing American's cost of living.
Tariffs have had less effect on prices in US than one would think. Inflation is lower.
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.
<Cuba has entered the chat...>
And the question is, What the hell is in the Epstein files that this is needed.... :-)
It was bad enough that they stripped Andrew of his titles, staff and property.
Did you see the Daily Show bit asking if Putin has the photo's of Trump blowing Bubba? https://youtu.be/uaAuXttZbDM?t=81
A snuff film where the witness implicates Trump is something we already know about.
I'm not sure I have the stomach to know how deep it really goes.
Wow. Not The Onion.
There's no reason for the US to own Greenland except for the hyperfixation of one man. I hate that this is the world we continue to live in.
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...
Or, he's acting like a man that doesn't have to worry about elections.
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.
like the CEO of every public company and most politicians
Well he's been impeached twice (then acquitted) already, so this one will not really mean the end for him.
Do you know what impeached means?
True - but by impeached I meant actually removed from power.
Conviction requires 2/3 of the Senate. It's not happening.
Every morning I wake up wondering if it's happened yet, and every morning (so far) I've been disappointed
I was glad when the Butler shooter missed. Now I’m not so sure.
So you would prefer Trump be a martyr?
Trumps death would have been out of the news cycle within a month, just look at Charlie Kirk.
I am wondering why Trump seems so eager to turn America back into a 19th-century. Slavery next on his agenda?
Surely you're not wondering, it's universally known what motivates the man.
But that plan is so short sighted that even he might live long enough to see it fail
I thought you guys were already doing slavery but just calling it penal labor.
He's on a race because he knows his time is limited, eventually the Epstein files will be exposed. Time will tell.
If I had a hammer…
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.
If they do not step in when this admin is attacking America, they sure as hell are not going to step in when this admin attacks other countries.
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.
They’re due to rule on his tariffs soon. If they find he exceeded his power then a real showdown starts.
I'm convinced that they don't care.
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:
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.https://archive.ph/EhTNh
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.
So in order to threaten our great continent and civilisation, Trump is threatening to raise taxes on Americans. The USA is so cringe.
With this the EU-US tariff deal from earlier goes down in flames. It apparently wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Not surprising given how Trump and the fascist MAGA crowd acts.
The UK are in a precarious spot though due to not being inside the EU single market and are forced to find their own way out with a much weaker hand.
Brexit forever and ever coming back to haunt the UK.
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.
Impeaching has to come from inside the US. Doesn't really look like there is much opposition from inside, is there?
Trump has already been impeached … twice … from within the US.
Yeah I don't think that's what the comment I was answering to meant with "to finally impeach".
The EU is not a military/security alliance (yet).
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.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/treaty/teu_2016/art_42/oj/eng
“by all the means in their power” … “sorry we don’t have the means to destroy ourselves by attacking the US”
Because most European countries are US vassals. They have US bases on their soil. What kind of a sovereign nation will allow another country's military on their ground??
That means at the end of the day they will bitch and moan but eventually they will do what US tells them to do. Otherwise they'll get the same medicine that Libya, Iraq, etc etc has received for disobedience.
Most countries are ok with foreign troops if they are friendly and there to oppose a common enemy, basically Russia in the case of Europe. Europe doesn't fit the normal definition for vassal state.
It's unlikely the US will do a Libya on Europe. I think we'll probably just wait for Krasnov to pass.