I don’t know how it is in EU countries, but I’m distressed at just how deep US corporations have their claws into UK politicians. e.g. https://www.thenational.scot/news/25367773.peer-urged-crack-palestine-action-request-us-arms-firm/
In the EU there is Italian Meloni desperate to please Trump and undermine the EU (without getting anything back from Trump, by the way). There is also a pro-Trump MAGA-like movement supported by some of the far-right parties of the Patriots (ironic that self-proclaimed “patriots” support a rival). Generally speaking, (far) right-wing parties now tend to be anti-EU and pro-Trump (when they are not pro-Putin).
Merz is just as bad, as is Wilders.
It has been known that the US companies used UK as lobby when the latter was in the EU.
De Gaulle was right. He always thought the US will use UK to wedge itself and influence Europe. Even though he knows UK will always stand with Europe, he said they will always pick US over Europe.
Don’t worry we have Putin and Netanyahu influencing us in the US. So the US is just a middleman wedge into the UK, from now Russia and Israel.
Aye. Long been a thing: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL28536706M/Awkward_Partner
I always find it interesting how the UK, who left the EU complaining about sovereignty, is not trying to give up US tech products like the EU is.
Scandimandian here, hell yeah. Local is best, produced by fellow citizens somewhere in the county second.
A lot of stuff, particularly tech is hard to find though. At best it’s low grade Chinese stuff with a custom label slapped onto it. Not even assembled here by foreign parts. Just straight from slave factories.
But I eat local eggs at least. Made by slave hens.
this is the problem with people zealously advocating boycotting american industry. good on paper, sticky in practice.
it’d be great if you could just never buy american again but certain economic sectors, such as tech, only really offer you the one market. idk what europe’s precious metal industry looks like but both the US and Europe need to heavily invest in fabs in the coming decades. for all the problems we have, the entire West’s reliance on Chinese fabs is our collective achille’s heel
Why exactly do you deserve better? The foundation of your wealth was plundering the global south, and still continue to do so through financial institutions built with the wealth plundered to this day except in the countries that managed to forcefully kick your ass out, which you now label as authoritarian lmao.
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As someone once put it, “politics is the art of saying “nice doggy” until you can find a rock”. Buying off the toddler-in-chief with obsequious compliments and gold-plated tat buys time to decouple your economy, and is a less-worse alternative than him deciding to make an example of your country, sinking your economy, and your government being replaced by actual Nazis.
I mean Donald Trump is already attempting to replace the governments with Nazis yet they project about globalists treating tariffs over progressive policy, look at how Elon Musk interfered with Germany’s election making them turn further rightward with his propaganda Platform Twitter giving extra spotlight on right wing voices, that wanker would litterally try to convince Germany for first-past-the-post and with terrible options being fascists or neoliberals. Thank god leftists can win under mixed-member proportional, however european need to become more resilient against the far-right with tighten election rules ie $50 per year contributions to local, regional and national elections.
The one on the left is a lie. Coca-Cola consumption has risen since trump, for instance.
Got some data to back that up? All I can find is a decline in Europe revenue 2025 Q1 by 1.1%, but hey, maybe you found more recent numbers?
Data from July where I read it: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1m6ykfl/cocacola_earnings_beat_estimates_as_strong_demand/
Growth was 3% in EMEA, can’t find the 5% for Europe, might have hallucinated that one…
EDIT: I just noticed I didn’t claim 5% in my previous comment above, but had this exact discussion recently many times and was convinced it was 5% up in Europe. It’s late, I need a nap…
Oh wow, thanks. Someone under that post also linked that this is not about Coca Cola the drink, but everything owned by the Coca Cola company, which is over 500 brands.
As I recently explained to someone else on here: I genuinely don’t think most Europeans are doing the research regarding the background of the brands they buy. It’s easy to avoid things like the standard Coca Cola drink as that’s well known to be from the US, but I’m sadly willing to bet that most of those other brands would be purchased without much of a second thought.
I think the easiest way to get people to adapt is to require that stores have sections with “European products”. Products in there must be 100% European in origin.
Mandate that stores separate those two. Promote the European ones. Check if it actually is.
If we make it easier for the consumer, we make it easier for all.
Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines, but maybe just a mandatory country of origin flag next to the price. However the downside of that is that some of our food is already picked one country and then transported to another for processing, then transported to another for packaging. So my idea is unrealistic. However I like your “this is picked, processed and packaged in Europe only” type of labeling. Sadly I’m sure that all of the big food producers would be against it and they have a lot of money to lobby the government to prevent this.
An alternate would be new stores that only do European.
I’d foresee a lot of potential with that, honestly. Stores that explicitly advocate themselves as having 100% European products, and can back it up.
Eurofederalists would be happy because it gives the EU a stronger footing.
Nationalists would be happy because it means their own country, or at least Europe, is largely represented.
Ecologists would be happy because it’d mean less waste generally, in terms of transport.
And so on…
I just know that the main supermarkets in my country are actively lobbying the government and suing the competition to squash them. But hey, if we don’t try we lose by default.
No, we fucking don’t. Would it be better for “us” and the rest of the planet if we got our shit together and finally reduced our dependency on the US, maybe even established ties with the rest of the world that don’t aim for domination? Sure! Did we do anything to deserve a better fate than a painful decline into irrelevance after ruining the planet for 500 years? Fuck no.
reduced our dependency on the US
I mean that’s what literally why the european Union is looking into trade negotiations with Mexico and certain South American countries recently.
painful decline into irrelevance after ruining the planet for 500 years? Fuck no.
The people in the present and future do not deserve to pay for the actions for the past unless they want to keep being racist and not owe up to the atrocities of colonialism. Not everyone agreed with the cruel actions of european leaders in the past, Christopher Columbus is a clown. It also doesn’t make sense how you want the most accountable democracies in the world to fall into irrelevance, they should thrive as they’re the most prosperous that can donate foreign aid look how Norway contributes the most aid per capita.
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I’m not much into memes, but kinda like this one :)
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We didn’t design the bad systems in which we are forced to participate.
https://www.quora.com/Do-USA-citizens-deserve-better-candidates-than-Trump-and-Hillary/answer/Jay-Bazzinotti
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Various democracy systems exist without corruptible representatives. At least direct democracy is used, and is susceptible to populism and propaganda. Computer-aided deliberative democracy sounds about right.
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We did not design it but we let them keep on screwing us, over and over.
It would barely be a caricature to say the EU politics for the Last 35 years has been a constant middle finger towards EU-citizens. And most of us saying something like ‘well, not my problem’…
Make a new party for which the only policy point is to change the voting system.
Say “vote for us and we change the voting system and the immediately resign and make way for a new vote”.
But the people don’t want that, because they get played against each other.
Most politicians, and pretty much all viable ones who have any chance of getting elected or can control the direction of any major party, are either rich bastards themselves or cronies and sycophants to the rich, the fact that they’re the only choices we get to vote for doesn’t make them “representative” it just means they’ve completely stacked the deck so that we have no choice but to vote against ourselves no matter who we vote for. Democracy itself hasn’t totally failed us (yet, I hope) but our political system of representation and the current institution of democracy certainly has.
Its almost like this russian dude wrote in the early 20th century about the state serving the ruling class of each respective country. What you think is a “democracy” is really a bourgeois democracy.
This doesn’t apply in countries with proportional representation since people can vote who they want.
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