All bullies rely on people just rolling over and giving up without a fight. Until they can find enough people to fight their fights for themselves. And Trump is a bully. Europe must not give in. Not to Trump and certainly not to Putin.
The issue is that both Trump and Putin heavily support fascist parties in European countries. Just today Musk endorsed Germany‘s far right / nazi party again.
What will unfortunately probably happen is that European leaders will not give into the US‘s demands initially, prices rise due to trade wars and some goods possibly become inaccessible.
The lower standards of living fuel dissent and fascists get elected in EU countries who cut deals that might relieve the situation temporarily but will almost certainly enrich the fascists themselves, weaken the EU and weaken democratic values.
It is so annoying that this is true and could have been easily prevented by focusing on renewable energies and electric vehicles sooner, instead of artificially slowing them down. Europe could be a lot less dependent on energy imports already.
Luckily the EU isn’t just a single country with a central government that’s easily swayed. Hell, they usually don’t easily agree on anything. But this is something they’ll gladly shoulder together.
My opinion as an American is that Trump is doing this to apease Putin. By making American fossil fuels less attractive it might push EU back to Russian sources. Just my guess though. I would still hope the EU stands firm and tells both Trump and Putin to F off.
Sure, Donnie, sure.
Or more like:
shut the fuck up, Donnie.
US-Americans can have their own kind of Brexit. I assume this leads to more nuclear weapons though, because as the trade conflict escalates, the EU will likely arm itself too.
The EU is not going to do you any favours Donny
No one sane wants your fossil fuels Donnie
Eh, I mean. You have to buy fossil somewhere, unfortunately.
We used to buy it in great part from Russia, now we can’t. Which is a good thing. But that severely limits our options.
Even if Trump were to shut the fuck up, which would be amazing, we would probably be buying a lot of raw energy materials from USA anyway.
“Forcing” us to buy American energy is a bit like putting food in your dog’s bowl and then sternly commanding him to eat it, showing off your leadership skills.
True but we also have to sell it or the price “has” to skyrocket locally.
Is there nowhere else in the world that the EU could get their oil and gas? And no alternatives to oil and gas? It would be kind of ironic if trump doing this and Musk pushing electric cars actually reduced the world’s reliance on fossil fuels!
I think Norway(I know they aren’t part of The EU) and Sweden also have at least natural gas reservoirs that are currently being used to supply the EU.
Plenty of other places, all of them much worse.
Call me old fashioned but even with all of their problems I would still rather buy stuff from Trump’s USA than - say - Azerbaijan, or any of the turds with lipstick in the Middle East such as UAE, SA or Iran.
Is there nowhere else in the world that the EU could get their oil and gas?
Sure, that is why Trump wants the EU to buy from the US instead.
Oil, probably. Gas might actually get a bit difficult, though.
Doesn’t Norway have Gas?
You think we would be buying LNG from the Americas if Norway had enough gas for the whole continent?
Mhm I guess not
https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/european-natural-gas-imports
But the percentage of US import in the quarterly dataset isn’t that high though
