It seems that EU leaders have realized that the US can squeeze them, not just with tariffs, but with natural gas supplies. It used to be that Europe got most of its natural gas from Russia, till the pipelines were blown up, probably by the US. Now they pay much more to get shipped LNG from America.
Trump has hit European countries who oppose him annexing Greenland with increased tariffs. That’s not a big deal, but an LNG squeeze would be. It’s not that Europe wouldn’t be able to get enough LNG, if it wasn’t sold to them directly, they’d get it indirectly, just as they have continued to get a lot of Russian hydcrocarbons, but they’d pay more and energy prices are squeezing European (German) industry to death.
At the end of the day Ukraine is not a member of NATO or the EU. Denmark belongs to both. For Ukraine and the US, the Euros submitted to de-industrialization. They also sent almost all their weapons and ammo to Ukraine, and are damn near disarmed.
This policy is essentially hysterical, based on cold War trauma and driven hard by various Eastern Europeans and the Baltics.
But the situation the EU finds itself in is fundamentally simple. They’re de-industrializing. France is losing its overseas vassals, and with them cheap resources. They can’t get cheap resources from Russia and the expensive resources from America are controlled by a hostile and untrustworthy power whom it is impossible to cut a deal with. Say what you will about Russia, but they keep their deals and even after everything has happened if they were to agree to sell to Europe, they’d keep the deal.
Now I want to be very clear about the stakes here. Europe has no resources at scale other than farm goods to sell to the world. It has a very high population for its land mass, and its industry is legacy industry. When you look at tech lead lists, the EU as a whole is not even in the top four. (China, America, Japan, South Korea.)
To put it simply if they mishandle this the European standard of living is likely to crash by half in twenty years.
A deal must be cut with both China and Russia. Of the two Russia is more important. This is currently impossible because the Eastern EU nations will not allow it and the way the EU system is set up they have enough power to stop it from happening.
At the same time they are essentially welfare recipients, receiving stipends from Germany and France, who are the two real EU powers. Most of them should never have been allowed into the EU in the first place, especially the Baltics, who are undefendable and offer nothing.
Germany and France need to decide what to do to save themselves. If that means changing the EU or leaving it and forming a new association that’s what they need to do. They need to re-arm with their own weapon stack, not American weapons, and in the meantime they should probably buy Chinese weapons, but to do so they’d have to leave NATO or kick the US out of it, which, again, they’re going to need to do anyway, because, as the line goes, “the threat is inside the house.”
If they don’t sort this out and soon, they will suffer a catastrophic loss of standard of living. If that happens they face internal revolution.
The current EU leadership is some of the most pathetic in the world. Trained and raised as American vassals they just cannot understand that the world has changed. It’s not just Trump, Biden was draining them dry too, his administration was just smart enough to, as it were, “boil the frog.”
While the EU still has an industrial base it needs to act to save that base.
As for current tactics, what should be done is simple enough. Counter-tariffs make no sense. Break the DMCA and go after American internet and tech companies which make vast amounts of money in the EU. Force Ireland to cooperate. Let people break the digital locks on American tech, and give them right of repair. If it goes far enough break patents and start producing in the EU. (The US broke Germany’s chemical patents in WWI and basically US chemical industry is based on those broken patents.)
The other step is to stop EU money from flowing into America and force EU wealth to be used inside the EU to create industry and improve tech. The EU sends vast amounts of investment money to the US. Stop that, repatriate as much as possible and get to work with real industrial policy. This will hurt Trump’s real base, the oligarchs, and help Europe.
Europe must end its US vassalage and cut deals with its “enemies” because the US is a greater threat than China or Russia. And if the Eastern EU states aren’t willing to go along with this, cut them loose. They offer very little and are a drain on the actual productive parts of Europe. (Not just Germany and France, but Italy, the Nordics and the low countries.)
The Euros don’t have a lot of time to deal with this, there in severe decline that will end in, not just disaster, but catastrophe.
(And no, I don’t think they’ll do most of this, but there’s value in laying it out.)
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Canada has cut a trade deal with China. This is what I have been suggesting for ages, and it’s finally happening. (Not, of course, because Carney reads me, but because it’s the obvious play and of all Western leaders he’s been the most resistant to Trump’s threats and blackmail.) 