Summary
Donald Trump has announced plans to impose 25% tariffs on the European Union, claiming the bloc was “formed to screw the United States.”
While details are pending, he suggested the levies would target cars and other imports. The EU, a major U.S. trading partner, has vowed immediate retaliation, with potential tariffs impacting $29.3 billion in exports.
French President Emmanuel Macron had attempted to dissuade Trump, urging focus on China instead.
Critics, including economists and conservative media, warn the tariffs could harm the U.S. economy.
Edit: https://lemmy.ca/comment/14304431
I mean, we have retaliatory tariffs ready to go too, and I’m not sure they’d be any less damaging.
If we went nuclear shutting off power to New York and water to Seattle and Boise is a thing we could do.
They backed off twice already. Its a joke at this point.
Twice? Are you thinking of the first term thing?
The last time, it really looked like he panicked when the Dow (predictably, to everyone else) fell. If he blinks every time, yeah, it’s never going to actually happen, although I can’t see him deciding that actually he’s wrong about tariffs being awesome.
He pushed it by a month again. Now its for sure actually defenitely gonna happen in April Im serious guys no really.
Uhh, this CBC story is from a couple hours ago: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-tariff-march-4-1.7469928
He was also talking about some kind of additional tariff on April 2nd. On the auto industry (that will be shut down if he follows through anyway), IIRC. That being said, as CBC noted elsewhere he himself is bad at keeping his threats straight.
Huh. There were some CBC articles floating around saying they were postponed again. I guess not? The articles are gone.
I feel like nobody knows wtf is going on.
After I sent this, I saw a clip about it. It looks like he did suggest it was all on April 2 in some interview. If he had it wrong, was deliberately being confusing or what is unclear, but it hardly matters.
We’ll see what happens then, basically. Either way, we should be getting the hell away from American dependence.
That’s exactly what they want.
Water to Seattle? Is this legit because Seattle has no shortage of precipitation or water AFAIK.
Assuming their supply is related to the Colombia river system, yes. It looked like all of Washington was in the watershed in the map I saw.
How badly impacted they’d be by us messing with the upstream supply, I can’t say.
The Columbia flows through Eastern Washington, it’s on the other side of a mountain range from Seattle. That’s like threatening to cause an avalanche at Banff to hurt Vancouver.
In either case it’s the environment that would bear the brunt of the conflict. If you want to hurt Seattle you could just raise our electric bill.
Ah, my bad. So many mountain ranges makes it hard to keep track of what flows where. I’m a little unclear on the bits I’ve been through many times, even.
Well, IIRC the rest of Washington is a militia-ridden red state, so maybe that’s even better. (Or am I thinking of Oregon?)
Both actually, as depressing as that is. The entire region started as the Oregon Territory just before the civil war, and ever since the beginning has had to grapple with far right nutjobs.
Over time the coastal west of each state became more and more blue and populous, while the east stayed rural and backwards.
Things are slowly changing though, Spokane county has voted blue for the past decade.
Good to know!
Do it. I know some people in New York who could use a reality check.
And hopefully Trump would care? Last time we blacked them out (by accident) all hell broke loose in just a day, but they don’t vote Republican.
Come to think of it, we could also cut off land access to Alaska. We’re going to wait for him to escalate this first, though.
The bat needs to bounce back and also hit the fascist ball in the face. Making things worse for everybody for no reason!
Oui oui le tariff oui