They never did lack a spine. They firstly, and rightly so, tried civility and diplomacy. The rest of the world has more grace than what america has produced.
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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The trade deal they reached last year was pure capitulation if you ask me.
The trade deal was an empty promise to America that gave them nothing. They "promised" investments and purchases that the EU has no ability or willingness to actually follow through on to just make him go away and get distracted by something else.
The tariff increases were very real though. Sure, we negotiated them down in the deal, but they were still much higher than before "liberation day", and one-sided. China on the other hand did not budge and got the US to back down eventually.
IMO, the tariffs are not such a big deal. If we want to decouple from the USA, them tariffing us is a good way to start that process in a gentle and controlled manner. Us tariffing them is IMO a low priority. They barely export any physical goods to Europe that are competitive with domestic EU products. The thing that Americans sell us that we need to stop buying is software and cloud services, but those are not affected by tariffs.
Therefore it's a waste of time and money for us to tariff the USA. What we need to do is make a targetted effort to get off of their software and cloud tech stack. This is already happening rather quickly, but the EU needs to do more to make it happen faster. The Anti-Coercion Instrument will help a lot if the EU triggers it, but there's also a lot more subtle things the EU can do (some of which are already underway).
I agree that their goods do not hold a candle to European ones in many cases and services are the real issue, but there's another side to the story, which is our products being in disadvantage in their market because of the tariffs, which directly results in job losses here, either through lost business or European companies moving production lines to the US. So the tariffs are a problem, and both the initial angry response from us and the sigh of relief after the deal was reached pretty much tell that story, and while tariffing back might not be the best counter, simply accepting the tariffs is not it either. A tax on Big Tech for example could've been a firm response, both to hurt American interests and catalyze our migration away from their services.
Nobody relevant is moving production lines from Europe to America, because it'd be insane to do so with how fast the tariff rates are constantly changing, and the fact that the US Supreme Court could end up ruling that Trump isn't even allowed to set tariff rates. Even if the tariffs became stable though, european manufacturers won't move their production lines to the USA because most advanced manufacturing relies on a complex, global supply chain. This means that tons of parts for e.g. cars need to cross borders multiple times, and often get double or triple tariffed, making it more attractive to move the production line out of the USA, and just sell the finished car in the USA and eat the tariff once.
Our products being less competitive there due to tariffs will result in lower sales, and will mean that our companies will focus on other markets, which is a good thing. If our companies rely on exports to the USA in order to be solvent, then that makes us more vulnerable to the USA. A 15% tariff is not enough to drive our exporters out, because they still easily outcompete in lots of categories, but it makes it less attractive for them to sell to the USA when they could sell elsewhere, which is on the whole, a good thing IMO.
A tax on Big Tech for example could’ve been a firm response, both to hurt American interests and catalyze our migration away from their services.
No disagreement here. The EU representatives likely chose to not do that one so they could buy more time to be more prepared for a louder phase or the trade war (or for Trump to get bogged down in another topic and forget about Europe). It's looking unavoidable now, so I hope they go for a firmer approach that targets American big tech.
It's silly to say the EU is capitulating though.
Nobody relevant is moving production lines from Europe to America
It literally happened in my own city: Volvo announced firing of 2000 people in Sweden (article in Swedish) followed by announcement of moving a production line to South Carolina (article in Swedish). It hardly gets more real than that. But sure, call tariffs not important and my argument silly.
Okay, that is a fair and relevant example. I do think it's worth noting though that Volvo is a bit of an outlier here. I also just don't see how we decouple from the USA without having trade barriers.
I mean, maybe there's things the EU or Sweden can or should do to force Volvo not to do that, but since they already let Volvo be bought up by China, I'm not sure it'd even be practical or possible.
No. Not yet. It needs to.
Yeah I just read there's no majority for using the trade bazooka (article in Swedish)
Translation for anyone that needs it
The EU is expected to wait with tougher measures after Donald Trump's recent tariff threat and wants to negotiate primarily, Politico reports, citing sources.
This weekend, the EU discussed tariffs on US goods worth nearly SEK 1,000 billion and the possibility of activating the EU's so-called trade bazooka, Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), which could mean that access to the EU's internal market is closed off.
But so far there is no majority of member states to activate ACI, despite pressure from France, the sources say.
Instead, the strategy is to wait and see what Trump actually does. No sharp decisions are expected at this week's extraordinary EU summit on 22 January. Any major decisions are expected at the earliest in early February, the newspaper said.
It's a literal threat to all of Europe. I think we must band together and take both economic and military measures!
Threat to the world, which Europe alone is suited to face.
Ugh. Fuck sake. It's time. Get the Bazooka out!
It's a pretty ironically named option because it requires a 1-year consultation process. It's hardly speedy and dynamic.
but dave keating said so
who are you to defy dave keating
ha!
Wouldn't say that just yet. Depends on whether they retaliate with tarrifs of their own and start dumping US bonds.
Cén rogha eile atá acu?
What other choice do they have?
Let's not pretend that it's Trump who is doing the coordination. It was not bad luck that von der Leyen was
receiving the news while she was at the signing ceremony for the Mercosur free trade deal.
The Americans expect a reaction of the EU and must have already prepared for that.
Treating this as a fight between the EU and Trump is a mistake. The EU is up against the most advanced hybrid war machine in the world.
esperemos
Het is vrij matig, dat de enige manier als Europeanen, met elkaar te praten, hamburger taal is. Juist nu.
Sure, let everyone fire up the translator engine instead of immediately understanding each other. Takes more effort, thus makes it harder to understand each other.
And we should really like more understanding, not less.
It really doesn't matter what the common language is, but it makes sense to have one, and we already have English now. We can also think to change that (there is Esperanto), but there's really no super major reason to do it, it's not like by using English we support the US or by using Dutch we now support the Netherlands. It's just a way of communicating, as long as we're able to do it easily, let's just do that.
Also, even though the UK exited the EU, it still lies in Europe. The language still originated in Europe. Ireland also uses English.
Naja, ich sehe es lieber als "Euro English".
Ça a l'air d'être copium ! Nous avons besoin une véritable langue continental, ou on tous doit parle anglais avec une accent irlandais.
L’anglais d'Irlande est tres beaux ! Mais, ma français n’est pas beaux...
Of je praat fish-en-chips engels en eindigt woorden met -our, -ise, etc.
Cur non lingua latina?
Ik nomineer Nederlands oder Deutsch
Friesisch. Kann fast keiner, deswegen fühlt sich kaum jemand auf den Schlips getreten, und es ist fast wie Englisch.
Bûter, brea en griene tsiis!
WTF is green cheese
Brząśluk śwędrzy czopliwą gręńskotą wźniuka!
Like genuine question, do you guys think we can genuinely win this? I mean, we're being attacked on two fronts, by the USA and by Russia working together. Don't mean to be a doomer, but these countries have had quite the experiences with infiltration, manipulation and wars.
I don't know what history books you've read but the United States has a very long and documented history of not winning wars. Especially when their own population are so against it.
Meanwhile Russia is in no state to threaten anyone. What little they have in terms of military assets are tied up in Ukraine. If they try to attack Europe they'd get flattened in about 2 minutes.
Anyway it looks like trump's probably going to get impeached and presumably he doesn't want that to happen so he's unlikely to actually start World War III for reasons of self-preservation.