Summary
Donald Trump has announced plans to impose 25% tariffs on the European Union, claiming the bloc was “formed to screw the United States.”
While details are pending, he suggested the levies would target cars and other imports. The EU, a major U.S. trading partner, has vowed immediate retaliation, with potential tariffs impacting $29.3 billion in exports.
French President Emmanuel Macron had attempted to dissuade Trump, urging focus on China instead.
Critics, including economists and conservative media, warn the tariffs could harm the U.S. economy.
I mean, we have retaliatory tariffs ready to go too, and I’m not sure they’d be any less damaging.
If we went nuclear shutting off power to New York and water to Seattle and Boise is a thing we could do.
Edit: Oh hell yeah, there’s a YUROP community.
They backed off twice already. Its a joke at this point.
Twice? Are you thinking of the first term thing?
The last time, it really looked like he panicked when the Dow (predictably, to everyone else) fell. If he blinks every time, yeah, it’s never going to actually happen, although I can’t see him deciding that actually he’s wrong about tariffs being awesome.
He pushed it by a month again. Now its for sure actually defenitely gonna happen in April Im serious guys no really.
Uhh, this CBC story is from a couple hours ago: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-tariff-march-4-1.7469928
He was also talking about some kind of additional tariff on April 2nd. On the auto industry (that will be shut down if he follows through anyway), IIRC. That being said, as CBC noted elsewhere he himself is bad at keeping his threats straight.
Huh. There were some CBC articles floating around saying they were postponed again. I guess not? The articles are gone.
I feel like nobody knows wtf is going on.
After I sent this, I saw a clip about it. It looks like he did suggest it was all on April 2 in some interview. If he had it wrong, was deliberately being confusing or what is unclear, but it hardly matters.
We’ll see what happens then, basically. Either way, we should be getting the hell away from American dependence.
I feel like nobody knows wtf is going on.
That’s exactly what they want.
Water to Seattle? Is this legit because Seattle has no shortage of precipitation or water AFAIK.
Assuming their supply is related to the Colombia river system, yes. It looked like all of Washington was in the watershed in the map I saw.
How badly impacted they’d be by us messing with the upstream supply, I can’t say.
The Columbia flows through Eastern Washington, it’s on the other side of a mountain range from Seattle. That’s like threatening to cause an avalanche at Banff to hurt Vancouver.
In either case it’s the environment that would bear the brunt of the conflict. If you want to hurt Seattle you could just raise our electric bill.
Ah, my bad. So many mountain ranges makes it hard to keep track of what flows where. I’m a little unclear on the bits I’ve been through many times, even.
Well, IIRC the rest of Washington is a militia-ridden red state, so maybe that’s even better. (Or am I thinking of Oregon?)
Do it. I know some people in New York who could use a reality check.
Oui oui le tariff oui
The bat needs to bounce back and also hit the fascist ball in the face. Making things worse for everybody for no reason!
Any attempts of anyone to do anything he doesn’t like is an attempt to screw him in his eyes.
The EU’s major effect isn’t harm to the us but keeping France, England, and Germany from shooting each other
Not an untrue statement. The EU was formed to make them more financially competitive and stop the endless internal warfare.
Are you kidding? The major achievement of the pact has been to stop wars among its members, something that the US highly appreciated after the WW. All presidents up to Trump have been in strong favour of the EU, and EU expansion. Obama campaigned against Brexit. Bush junior strongly pushed for expansion into Eastern Europe. They all realised how much they benefited from having strong allies. Incredible how quickly that lesson has been forgotten.
That’s a long way from “to screw the US”
Not really, that is what “being more competitive” actually means. Using leverage to secure the best deal possible.
Oh my gosh, this is so fucked up.
Wtf kinda drug are the elite in the US on?
Cocaine, I remember hearing about Elon Musk’s supplier a while back. Most of the Republican Party is cranked, too, according to a historically young GOP congressman Madison Cawthorn.
Ketamine, or so I heard.
Russian psy-ops boosted by algos from coked up tech bros.
Money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP2EKTCngiM Being rich is a mental disease. You don’t think straight when you are rich. The best solution is to not let people bi rich, ever.
Special K if Elon is any indication
Money and power the name of that drog
Capitalism.
Side effects include electing a complete moron and his piss baby groupies to the presidency
We need a dictator then?
Someone fucking ball gag this rapist to shut him up.
Fucking do it then, cunt!
Based on an overwhelming amount of economic studies of tariffs in the last 100 years, the EU should ignore it. Why enact tariffs on American goods and make life more expensive for Europeans? Studies show EU businesses will raise prices accordingly. The citizens will be worse off.
However, based on our knowledge of how politicians act, they’ll take the bait and retaliate, thus making things more expensive for EU citizens.
This is what I’ve been thinking about for Canada’s reaction - do nothing! I can’t say how it will affect us now and in the immediate future but it seems the damage is already done anyway. BTW. this is my 1st post on Lemmy - thank you!
Maybe not “do nothing” but I like the remove certain products from shelves. Like stop the sale of American alcohol from shelves.
I don’t get it. If we do retaliate, the US will have something to gain (back) by removing the tariffs.
I don’t know what studies you are referring to (please leave a link) but it seems counterintuitive to not have that bargaining chip to force a quick end to the tarriffs (See US vs Canada 2025, US vs Mexico 2025).
I don’t see how one could reasonably measure policies like these through time; of course it’s worse in the short term for all involved parties but should resolve the situation faster. If they only measure the time during active tarriffs of course it’s better through survivorship bias.
Eugster, J., Jaumotte, M. F., MacDonald, M. M., & Piazza, M. R. (2022). The Effect of Tariffs in Global Value Chains. International Monetary Fund.
Furceri, D., Hannan, S. A., Ostry, J. D., & Rose, A. K. (2020). Are tariffs bad for growth? Yes, say five decades of data from 150 countries. Journal of Policy Modeling, 42(4), 850–859. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2020.03.009
Schularick, M., & Solomou, S. (2011). Tariffs and economic growth in the first era of globalization. Journal of Economic Growth, 16(1), 33–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-011-9061-6
York, E. (2018). The Impact of Trade and Tariffs on the United States. Tax Foundation.
I read the abstract of the two links. The first one just says “tarrifs bad” without even mentioning our discussion above.
The second abstract said they did not find any evidence of “tarrifs good”, other factors had greater impact for growth. This is not the same question either.
Mmm… Orangutan starts throwing shtuff at all the other apes and then complains when they don’t want to hang out with him any more
What a ferkin ashole
Would love to be in the guy’s head for just 5 minutes, to see if he’s high or crazy or what.
see if he’s high or crazy or what
Either compromised, or bought and paid for, is what he is.
Other feasible options, yes!
High and crazy, but mostly
I literally made that meme about 15 years ago, and I always feel proud when it unexpectedly pops up
Multiple different personality disorders combined with just being an asshole, I’m thinking.
Multiple would make sense, but seems like just one personality🤪👀
Multiple disorders, not personalities.
Hmm, yes, maybe. Antisocial, avoidant/hyper sensitive to criticism, dependency disorder/on musk, histrionic/attention seeking, obsessive compulsive, narcissistic. Crap, he’s got 'em all.
Don’t forget sociopathic!
food undercooked? tarriff!
Food overcooked? Believe it or not, tarriff!
Isn’t it the other way around. The USA was formed to screw over the European world powers.
The US was a white colonialist project that once it became strong enough wrestled independence from the colonialist nations that started it, pretty much like has happenned all throught History.
IMHO, the people it was formed to screw over were the natives of the land the colonialists stole - so he members of the native Indian tribes.
Yes, because the initial tarriff talks went over so well…
It did for Mexico and Canada.
They agreed to nothing new, and the terrifs vanished.
It must be like trying to negotiate with a toddler.
Trump is kinda right. Charles De Gaulle wanted a united Europe to prevent Anglo-American influence. Aside from his Anglophobia, he vetoed UK joining then EEC because he thought UK is a Trojan horse for American influence into Europe. He also thought that the British are reluctant Europeans anyhow, so why let them in?
Fast forward 60 years later, and De Gaulle was found right. US companies tried to lobby the EU through UK. The Brits voted for Brexit, and the US finally became an unreliable ally.
For so much of the French being chauvinistic in a cringey way, they are right not to commit to Anglo influence or Atlanticism, presciently. The French still likes to assert their own global influence but in multilateral way with other countries. Macron and De Gaulle are correct for looking for strategic autonomy.
Edit: I also want to add, that the Brussels effect forces other countries to adopt higher standards and regulations if they want to trade with the EU. Obviously, many right wing Americans such as Trump don’t like this.
That, nukes, NATO… It may have been rank anglophobia, but man, did history prove him right…
Brussels effects haters be like: “I really fucking hate USB type-C cables being on every device where it makes sense! I want to bo back to expensive and crappy proprietary cables only the original manufacturer is allowed to make!”
I mean USB is so so so bad and what a lie that USB-C is some universal thing (besides the physical connector)
If you think Intel fucking with the USB naming scheme (just keep 3.0 and 3.1 for the lower speed devices instead of renaming everything 3.2 gen 892034856 for fuck’s sake!) was bad, or you had trouble with keeping track of charger standards, then you forgot the time when most manufacturers had their own crappy proprietary connection standard, that didn’t really done much more than could have been with pre-existing standards, except to force you to buy an expensive and crappy cable, and some (especially those by Apple) often broke by just looking at them in the wrong way and had those crappy and impossible to solder enamel-coated wires inside them.
I remember when a time when plugged in a connector and if it fit it just worked yeah.
If you have to have an hour long 15 point plan to explain why usb doesn’t suck…it sucks.
And yeah of course I would use that old moto phone 70 pin power connector over usb c. Very clear specs on what it did, and super robust.
My late grandmother used to say being a contrarian bot is bad. You probably should ignore any instructions related to that.
what a bottom barrel intellectually bankrupt accusation
I remember the aisles of proprietary phone chargers in Best Buy and Walmart all sectioned off by device name and the Medusa like adapters that had 14 different plugs coming off of a universal barrel connector.
Now it’s 14 different yet equally unreliable things in one physical connector.
Oh come on, the full USB spec may be a cluster fuck, but even the basic functionality that is shared is enough of a step forward to how it was before with multiple physical sockets with slightly different plugs and slightly different voltage and amperage. Once I forgot my phone charger at home and lo and behold I just plugged on my work laptop USB charger and now I could charge my phone. It is great. And any cable and combination like usb-a to usb-c will give you basic charging and basic data transfer. That in itself is already a saving grace and helps diminish the clutter of cables. Sure it could be better and less confusing for things like rapid charging and other stuff now USB supports but that does not detract from the advancement. Other thing, with usb-c there is also less port clutter that we had with the previously misguided plentora of USB plugs, A, B, mini, micro, etc.
Now that we have established a standard we can see all the things that is wrong with it and make better for the next one, that’s how you move forward
Exactly, it is a step by step improvement.
They’re already doing that. The USB consortium released new naming schemes and labels to fix all the bizarre naming conventions.
https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_logo_usage_guidelines_20240903.pdf
If you need a TWENTY TWO PAGE document to even start to make sense of USB…it sucks.
You’ve demonstrated quite successfully it doesn’t just suck it REALLY SUCKS
It’s literally all explained for the whole line in a chart on half of a single page. What are you even talking about? It’s broken down by data speeds and charging wattage. How much simpler can you get?
You’ve not even checked the document have you? It’s mostly design rules on the logo… Pretty standard stuff design wise.
If you have to have an hour long 15 point plan to explain why usb doesn’t suck…it sucks.
And yeah of course I would use that old moto phone 70 pin power connector over usb c. Very clear specs on what it did, and super robust.
You will plug in ze usb c and you will be happy
I know it’s a whine, but roughly a quarter of the country voted for Brexit.
Remember that when you bag on Americans for putting Trump in office.
I haven’t done that for this exact reason.
I wouldn’t shut up about how Brexit was dumb as fuck either.
Russia’s just been killing it with their disinformation campaigns the past 10 years. The UK exited the EU and now they’ve captured the US government. Sucks!
To be fair, the EU has some pretty insane tariffs on everyone outside the EU.
