I wonder what this means for the EU. We made a new deal under pressure of the tariffs that is actually worse than the deal we had. If we had not bent the knee, we would have had that original deal back, or at least, so it seems? Now we seem to be properly shafted due to weak politicians.
1. The EU would face higher tariffs on their exports to the USA. Now mostly struck down
2. The EU would not retaliate with tariffs of its own. Not really a big deal since the only US export to the EU that's worth worrying about are digital services, and those aren't subject to tariffs anyways.
3. The EU promised to buy lots of LNG and make investments in the USA to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. This was a bald-faced lie on the part of the EU negotiators. Even if the EU wanted to actually do this, they have no power or mechanism to make member states and companies within those member states buy more LNG or make more investments in the USA. This was just an empty promise.
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So if the tariffs are struck down, we're more or less back to where we started.
> The EU promised to buy lots of LNG and make investments in the USA to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. This was a bald-faced lie on the part of the EU negotiators. Even if the EU wanted to actually do this, they have no power or mechanism to make member states and companies within those member states buy more LNG or make more investments in the USA. This was just an empty promise.
The amounts named were also, ah, suspiciously similar to the amount of LNG Europe would generally buy, and the amount that would be invested in the US as a matter of course. It was kind of "well, the thing that would ordinarily happen will happen".
It also has an ever-increasing amount of debt and an aging population, e.g. the US is expected to spend more than $1 trillion a year on the interest on the debt itself, or $7,800 per household per year.
The EU is sovereign, it is, and always has been a project for member states to tackle issues at scale that would not make sense to duplicate on a national scale, and to reap the benefits together. Don't buy into the nonsense that being stronger together is somehow detrimental to sovereignty of member states. It in fact makes them less vulnerable to bad actors on an international such as the U.S., Russia, and China.
As I mentioned in another comment, if the EU is sovereign then member states no longer are, and if member states are sovereign then the EU isn't and still defers to member states.
That's why I think the way the term "sovereign" is thrown around is misleading and in fact part of push to transfer more control, and in fine sovereignty, to the EU from member states. People can decide if that's good or bad but the process is misleading.
HN is about curiosity and it seems that commenters do not use any as soon as the EU is mentioned but rather accept the official narrative without questions. The trend is to reduce member states' sovereignty, not to increase it, while the EU is taking over.
I think this is a valid point; France is sovereign now in a way that Texas isn't, for example. Texas doesn't have an independent nuclear deterrent. Or, more to the point, Minnesota.
But the rationale is clear. Europe has spent too many centuries and too many lives in warfare. There is no way forwards that isn't some kind of unified structure with the guns pointed outwards.
There's a common thread that the EU is some awful unaccountable organisation. This tends to mainly come from the US. It's also the line pushed by Russian propaganda for the last 15 years.
In reality the EU heads of state appoint the EU commissioners and form the EU council, and the EU parliament is elected by the public. Nothing gets passed by the EU without the approval of the council and parliament, and while it's arguable that parliament is a "rubber stamp" shop, it's certainly more independent from the executive than the US congress is, and the Council certainly isn't. It's also true that any country in the EU can choose to leave the EU at any time, unlike say the US, who refuse the right to self determination of its people.
> It's also true that any country in the EU can choose to leave the EU at any time,
Exactly. If countries want to be 100% sovereign, they can do a Brexit and enjoy the benefits and the downsides of doing that.
This {$x}exitter bullshit is so tiring. 27 space programs, 12 types of fighter jets etc are horrible expensive. EU-countries enjoy super-high benefits of sharing burdens. In times of might makes right, it gives each a high degree of sovereignty for a steep discount. Yes, being part of a collective does mean that you have to give-and-take with the collective.
It isn't a game of all "benefits for me" in a zero sum game.
> There's a common thread that the EU is some awful unaccountable organisation. This tends to mainly come from the US. It's also the line pushed by Russian propaganda for the last 15 years.
Not sure about the US, haven't seen such sentiment much. But from Russia? Yup, lots of EU skeptic parties have ties to Putin or Russia.
Neither the president nor the commissioners are elected by the people.
They must be glad to have useful idiots frame any criticism as Russian influence. It's truly inconceivable that any of their subjects would not be overjoyed by their supreme leaders.
By the way, why are they pushing for chat control while von der Leyen deleted her incriminating SMS?
The UK prime minister isn't elected by the people either. Doesn't mean it's not a democracy.
The EU Council is the heads of government of each EU country. Without their support there is no EU Commission president, no commissioners, and anything the EU tries to do can't be passed.
EU states can outright ignore EU law, like Hungary does. They won't be invaded, like if a nonsovereign entity like Minneapolis ignores the laws of its sovereign
This is akin to States in United States losing sovereignty to the United States Federal government. It is a balancing act between the two, and calling the USA (or the specific States) therefore not sovereign isn't about curiosity; it is intellectually dishonest. Surely you can do better if you want a discussion where curiosity reigns.
> [...] and in fine sovereignty, to the EU from member states [...]
This no longer works if NATO doesn't exist or if those member states get under military pressure by either Russia or the United States.
The narrative you mention is spread by alt-right trolls in order to lower the power the EU has. It is called divide and conquer.
> and calling the USA (or the specific States) therefore not sovereign isn't about curiosity; it is intellectually dishonest
No idea where this accusation comes from. The USA are a sovereign country. Individual US states are not sovereign (they are part of the US). That's what I have been saying wrt. EU vs member states as the EU moves towards federalisation. Where is the dishonesty?
It is moving control from member states to the EU.
An European country with strong military relation/dependence on the US, say, a la South Korea is still more sovereign than if it becomes a simple 'state' of a federal EU...
It is even more obvious if you take France as example as France has low dependency on the US and has been careful to keep its independence on defence matters. So for France it is all a pure loss of sovereignty and independence (which has been going on for years now, tbh).
To me, the EU is only using Trump tactically to further its aim of greater control over European defence.
The irony, or worse, is that no later than 2023 it was apparently urgent for Sweden and Finland to join NATO and to buy F-35s (Finland and many others)... The only clear thing is that we are taken for fools.
They are also doing a lot of generic work that benefits the ARM platform as a whole. And since Snapdragon X is a fucking mess on Linux, these Apple Silicon devices are actually some of the best cheap hardware you can buy with excellent performance.
Honestly, this seems like it could be pretty cool for video games. I always liked Oblivion's 'Radiant AI', this could be a natural progression, give characters motivations, relations with the player and other NPCs and have an LLM spit out background dialogue, then have another model generate the audio.
It is a war we must fight now, and must continue to fight. It is a war against oppression, against autocrats squishing their population for servitude. If nobody steps up to protect Democratic values, and the freedom of the people for self-governance, it is a slippery slope to hell.
The EU isn't doing any direct fighting in the Russian-Ukranian war, we are however donating and selling things, and being a refuge for those who quite understandably fled in fear of their lives.
Nobody's actually violated our sovreignty yet, we have no casus belli to go to war. But as the phrase the bullet cartridge is named after goes: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you really needed to fight, what you would have done was build a couple nuclear power plants, build some factories using Russian resources that they were giving you cheap, churn out some weapons and THEN go for war. What it did instead was watch the US blow up it's pipeline, harakiri its own nuclear power reactors, rent mobile Norwegian LNG terminals and make itself completely dependent on American weapons and Energy.
This is all preformative nonsense of EU elites that despise the European public and call Trump daddy to continue riding the Eurocrat gravy train. It's actually good for Europe that this mess is coming to an end. But the price was way too high and unnecessary.
Ukrainians have been repeatedly polled and the majority don't want to hold elections in wartime. That's democratic.
Holding an election while a foreign aggressor is occupying part of your territory and terrorising its population, enabling them to suppress and manipulate their votes: that's undemocratic.
Unions in countries like Germany and France are much more powerful. Especially VW is extremely unionized, half of the seats on the Supervisory Board are allocated to worker representatives. These employee representatives are elected or selected by the workers (usually via union and works council processes), so VW employees indirectly influence board decisions through these seats.
We should not be allying with any oppressive and dictatorial states, the US is just rapidly sliding into becoming one, and nobody wants to acknowledge it because of the consequences it would imply. If you ask me, us Europeans need to find our self-confidence, we are more than able to compete, but too scared to take the risks and responsibilities to do so.
Don't get me wrong, I would love that! I would love for Europe to step up as world super power (union), a kin to the Non-Aligned Movement - but unfortunately I don't see it happening.
It starts from the bottom up, we need to make it a priority, it is part of the defeatist attitude we have, total lack of self-confidence. We need a 'Yes we can' movement.
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