The article title is a bit of a misnomer because apparently they only surveyed western Europeans rather than people across Europe. But still it’s interesting.
These survey results appear in the article:
They absolutely should
I could imagine better ideas than tariffs on Jack Daniel’s tbh.
E.g.: Mandating EU companies to use EU server infrastructure, mandating large companies to use open-source software (ideally developed in the EU), stopping those F35 orders, throwing the US army off Greenland…
They tend to aim for things made in states that elected the politicians responsible. In the case of Jack Daniels, that comes from Mitch McConnell’s state
Sure, but acting like that means that you basically still believe in Transatlanticism, and hope for US Republicans to come to their senses. Rather than recognizing that the massive dependence on the US in terms of IT and military has to be dissolved, as the US admin is currently looking for new peers and as the US likely won’t be particularly stable or democratic over the next 10 years. In addition, the dependence on MS, Apple, Meta, etc. was a drain on resources even in the “good” days prior to Nov 2024.
I don’t think I agree with that. Decoupling from American military and tech products can happen with or without tariffs, but doing so is primarily for the security of Europe. The tariffs are done to damage the credibility of the politicians responsible for them. They’re attempting to achieve separate goals. Regardless of whether Europe can trust America — and I agree with you that Europe can’t — if Europe has the ability to turn American public opinion against policies that harm Europe, doing so is beneficial to Europe. Better a large power that can’t be trusted than one that is actively hostile.
Yeah, that’s a reasonable take. Still, with Silicon Valley having an outsized influence on the new US admin, I think I wouldn’t mind them hurting a little too. And I find the priorities may be mixed up too. Without essentially a miracle happening, Trump will continue to be there for a while and he will continue to do damage. At least tariffs are introduced easily though, and I don’t think anyone will give a shit whether they get drunk on Jack Daniel’s or some European spirit.
(The prospective new German coalition is even looking to expand a Bavarian pilot of Palantir nationwide – despite the fact that Palantir founder Peter Thiel is the man behind JD Vance. That’s going to be a massive blow to national security.)
Not just that, but Peter Thiel has German citizenship and speaks fluent German although with an accent. He is pretty much the most likely of the PayPal Mafia to do a lot of damage in Germany.
Any dependence on Micro$quash or Meta was always idiocy to begin with.
Apple and AWS, less so but still understandable.
Google is right out.
I get what you’re feeling, but I hope EU doesn’t respond from their emotions but with rational thinking. In the end the well being of EU citizens should come first. Independence is good, but a hard turn can have radical consequences also financially. Taking a small economic hit is imho much more preferable than a long recession. We as individuals might be able to carry the consequences of our changing behaviour but I think it’s better if the governments of Europe make careful decisions taking in account what pro’s and cons there are to their measurements.
That would be a dream! We should try to take away any possibility of blackmailing us from the outset!
As long as they hit the red states. You know, the ones that by sheer volume, supported the moron that started the tariffs.
The EU has historically been quite targeted when counter-tariffing America. A couple of quotes from this Guardian article:
These tariffs, which target notable US goods worth €4.5bn, often from Republican states, will snap back on 1 April.
And
“We try to hit … where it hurts,” said a senior EU official, who said the bloc was targeting soya beans, which are grown in Louisiana, the state of the US speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. “We love soybeans, but we’re happy to buy them from Brazil or from Argentina or from anywhere else.”
The us is one county I’m afraid
Hitting the red states feels good, but it won’t help much because they’ll just lap up whatever Trump tells them. If anything tariffing the blue states will result in more action by lighting a fire under the asses of the sane two thirds of America.
So what? They voted for it, they eat the price for their stupidity. Over and over again.
Yeah so like I said, it feels good but it doesn’t have much strategic value. Might as well tarrif the whole thing and hope something comes out of it.
I wish I didn’t just have Canadian made products labeled, it would be better to label American ones. I’m not against the rest of the world and their products, just the u.s. and frankly not the whole u.s, i will support California and Minnesota and other deep blue states.
Do it, you lose nothing by further distancing Europe from the United Nazis of America
I don’t know about tariffs, but i would like to see fees for data transfering of people outside of EU, more fees over GDPR non compliance and certain bans of data transfering to US (health data, finascial data etc). This is where they can be bleed.
Lets do it! And mark all EU products with the EU flag! “MADE IN EU”
thank you, we need the oligarchs weakened if we ever want america to be a democracy again
Kuddo’s for the bias disclaimer & adding in the graph. (Edit: typo)
Not to be that guy, but technically:
- Denmark & Sweden are Northern Europe
- Germany is Central Europe
- Spain & Italy are Southern Europe
I don’t disagree with this graph but in different context you can also divide Europe in to western European countries and eastern European countries according to their alignment during the majority of the previous century. In that case, Bulgaria, Poland and the Baltic states all belong to the group of eastern European state. I think this is the context in which OP meant the fact that mainly western countries are surveyed. I often see headlines mentioning Europe or Europeans and only refer to the EU and it’s citizens, in the same ‘wrong’ way.
From my understanding, calling a person from Poland ‘Eastern European’ is basically akin to asking for a fight.
Europe doesn’t end at Russia’s border - it ends at the Ural Mountains, so even drawing a midpoint between Portugal in the West and the mountains in the East still puts Poland, Slovakia and firmly in the western half.
I mean, sure you could arbitrarily divide a region as you see fit; by that logic California and Arizona are technically part of ‘The South’, since they’re in the bottom 50% of the continental US - right?
I understand why Polish people are offended by calling them eastern-Europeans. We have a lot of polish immigrants here doing, I believe I know how they feel about it, but there is still plenty of media outlets both local and international who write about eastern and western europe as they did before the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
It’s odd that the article title says “majority of Europeans” when the article itself makes clear that only some western European countries were surveyed. So I thought people should know that.
Totally
Hit them back - hard!
