EU prepares to hit Big Tech in retaliation for Donald Trump’s tariffs
www.ft.com
‘Bazooka’ tool being considered as bloc’s trade ministers express support for punitive action if necessary
  • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    22 hours ago

    Europe does have ASML, which creates a lot of the expensive and critical equipment for advanced semiconductor fabrication. That’s about it, though.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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        20 hours ago

        Yeah but those aren’t European. The topic was European alternatives, and i’d say Russia is sufficiently European to qualify. The EU is gonna disagree of course because they’re racist POS, but as they say, “fuck the EU”.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      Jokes aside though, the only realistic path Europe has here is to start massively funding open source platforms. I read there’s a bit of that happening, but really it should be done on a far bigger scale. Stuff like Mastodon, Lemmy, PeerTube, or even Odysee, can easily become as good as any commercial offering with even modest state backing. Meanwhile, stuff like NextCloud can completely replace Google services. LineageOS could be developed as a standard mobile operating system, and so on. It wouldn’t even be that hard to do because a lot of these projects are already fairly mature and proven. Imagine if the EU spent a fraction of the money burned on Ukraine doing this stuff for the past three years.

      • GreatSquare@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 days ago

        Imagine if the EU spent a fraction of the money burned on Ukraine doing this stuff for the past three years.

        It’s a good idea but I think the EU would still be faced with Trump tariffs reducing their competitive edge in their big export market. They already are struggling with rapid deindustrialization due to high energy costs. It all spells long recession.

        I don’t see Twitter, Google etc pulling out of the EU any time but I guess it’s possible.

        The EU are just going to fold. Their retaliation is not meaningful. They are economically weak.

        The trade surplus they had with America is eventually going to be invested back into the US to restore their manufacturing. They’re going to just pray it all turns a profit. It kills their own manufacturing jobs but they don’t give a shit really. The capitalists survive and that’s all they care about.

        • Pathfinder@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
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          2 days ago

          The only hope Europe has of breaking its subservience to the US is to not just make nice with Russia, but to totally embrace it. That is not likely to happen anytime soon, so Europe is just going to be America’s punching bag until they get it.

          • GreatSquare@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 day ago

            Honestly the EU could do a lot of stuff if they had their own interests in mind.

            They could sell EUV lithography machines to China while there’s still a market for it.

            They could invest in building their renewables even quicker so their energy costs can come down and they can afford to manufacture stuff in the future.

            I think they won’t do that though. Warms my heart to see Europe go down the drain due to their own subjugation to America. Screw them for their geopolitical shenanigans.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 days ago

        True. Though i’m a bit wary of some of these alternative platforms as well. Like i think i just read something about some top guy at Rumble becoming the new deputy director of the CIA? That doesn’t happen unless they were already deep in the intelligence apparatus, which makes you think…how many alternative platforms are similarly infiltrated?