61–70 of 395 posts
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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."
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> 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, oli…
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that would be a bad thing?
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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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, oli…
I'm not quite sure how you get from IP law abrogation to 'quasi-nationalization', care to explain your reasoning here ?
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.
Sure if they want to chase away their tax revenue.