Europe

EU offers Trump removal of all industrial tariffs

BRUSSELS — The EU has offered the United States a “zero-for-zero” tariff scheme, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday, seeking to avoid a tit-for-tat trade war.

“We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods as we have successfully done with many other trading partners. Because Europe is always ready for a good deal. So we keep it on the table,” she told a press conference alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Liberation Day", EU, Europe, USA

Disentangle from Europe

Marine Le Pen was just banned from running for president of France for five years. That’s more like forever. Le Pen is deemed a criminal and sentenced to wear an electronic tag for a couple years. A French court claims she embezzled. But why would we believe a French court any more than we believe a Manhattan or D.C. district court? Trump’s been through those wringers.

Macron and his mates did to Le Pen what Romanian elites did to Calin Georgescu, the populist candidate for president there. Reportedly, he was the frontrunner. If you smell a rat, you’re right.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

After Trump’s broad tariffs, Europe reels from the loss of an old ally

ROME — In announcing plans to rebuild post-World War II Europe, then-U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall linked security with economics. Without the United States doing whatever it could to promote “normal economic health in the world,” he said, “there can be no political stability and no assured peace.”

Nearly 80 years later, America’s closest allies in Europe see President Donald Trump’s tariffs as another blow to a fast-fracturing Western alliance that had stood as the most successful peace project of modern times — one whose pillars included shared democratic values, a strategic goal to contain Moscow as well as flourishing flows of trade and investment.

I don’t think anyone expected the Marshall Plan to be a permanent US financial obligation.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, USA

Lies, The Spirit of Munich, and JD Vance

In Washington this week, Vice President JD Vance introduced the documentary series based on my 2020 bestseller Live Not By Lies, which is about the lessons anti-communist dissidents of the Soviet bloc have for us today. In the book (which has been translated into most European languages), I talk about the “soft totalitarianism” of wokeness and left-wing illiberalism, and feature interviews with former dissidents who warn that we are facing a new form of oppression in the West—one with striking similarities to what they endured under the Soviets.

Some of these people—Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians, and others—appear in the four-part documentary, telling their stories and warning contemporary people to wake up while there is still time.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope

Europe Is No Longer Worth Defending

Since we no longer share the same ideals of freedom and democracy, we should no long shoulder their burdens.

Monday morning’s edition of the RealClear Politics news aggregator contained a very interesting manifestation of their usual juxtaposition of left vs. right thought pieces. It looked like this…

The articles themselves were no less notable in their approach to the dissipating relationship between a MAGA Revivalist America and a globalist declining Europe.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

Germany leads defiance to Trump car tariffs, saying it ‘will not give in’

Germany has said it “will not give in” and that Europe must “respond firmly” as US President Donald Trump targets imported cars and car parts with a 25% tax in his latest tariffs.

Other major world economies have vowed to retaliate, with France’s president branding the move “a waste of time” and “incoherent”, Canada calling it a “direct attack”, and China accusing Washington of violating international trade rules.

Carmaker stocks from Japan to Germany dipped. In the US, General Motors dropped 7%, while Ford fell more than 2%.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, Europe, USA

Euros for Russia’s next invasion – From Paris to Berlin, actions don’t match the grandiose verbiage.

Europe’s hypocrisy is on full display today.

As leaders meet in Paris to plan the continent’s defence, several European countries are sending wads of cash to the belligerent Kremlin in exchange for convenient oil and gas.

Think-tank Ember has found that the EU put €21.9 billion into Russian coffers in 2024, with gas imports up 18% on the previous year. EU support for Ukraine in 2024 was €18.7 billion.

Hungary and Slovakia, the usual suspects, bear heavy responsibility for the stark figures. But also unable to turn off the Russian gas tap is France – who today hosts 31 European leaders to develop plans to counter the Russian security threat.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", Europe, European Union

Europe Confronts Reality That Vance’s Hostility Is More Than Just a Show

European leaders had hoped that Vice President JD Vance’s antagonism was a political show to build domestic support. Now, after Vance expressed disdain for Europe in a private text chat about Yemen attack details, officials are coming to terms with a vocal vice president whose antipathy for Europe appears to run deep.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” he said regarding planned U.S. strikes against Houthi rebels, in an exchange published by the Atlantic magazine. He told fellow administration officials that the U.S. was “making a mistake” by hitting the Houthis, whose attacks on Red Sea shipping have scrambled global shipping routes.

He noted that only “3 percent of US trade runs through the Suez. 40 percent of European trade does.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied to Vance’s comments: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, USA

The ‘Signal Scandal’: Trump’s Cabinet Drops Truth Bombs on Europe

The Trump administration’s leaked—if you can call it that—discussions of war plans made headlines across the globe after a staffer working for National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (inadvertently) added a magazine editor to the senior officials’ group chat.

While American media questioned how on earth this major faux pas could occur, European commenters have been scandalized by the brutality of Team Trump’s behind-the-scenes talk regarding Europe.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, USA

Why the Trump White House hates Europe

Donald Trump’s cabinet inviting a journalist to a group chat to discuss bombing Yemen’s Houthi rebels must have given American security officials a collective heart attack.

But, for European and British officials, the most alarming aspect of the extraordinary affair was the single dissenting voice in the conversation that played out on Signal.

“I think we are making a mistake,” JD Vance, the vice president, texted from an economics event in Michigan as defence secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA director John Ratcliffe, among others, weighed up striking the Iran-backed Houthis.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, USA

Trump: America has been ‘raped and pillaged’ by Europe

The United States has been “raped and pillaged” by the EU, Donald Trump has said in a fresh jibe at European allies amid an expanding trade war.

Addressing his plans to reduce the national debt by imposing trade tariffs, the President claimed that America has been taken advantage of for years by its allies.

“For years, we allowed our country to be raped and pillaged,” Mr Trump told Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night. “Much of it was done by our friends. Look at the European Union.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, USA

Mark Carney looking to Europe to boost Canada’s security in shift away from reliance on U.S., sources say

OTTAWA — In an effort to pivot away from Canada’s overreliance on the U.S., Prime Minister Mark Carney is looking to Europe to build new security alliances and a new defence industrial strategy that could see European-designed fighter jets built in this country.

But two Canadian sources told the Star that prospect is only a possible implication of what Carney has set in motion after he ordered a review of the F-35 purchase plan, and travelled to Paris and London after discussing with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen his goal to see Canada be a player in the new drive to “rearm Europe.”

EU shuts Britain out of €150bn rearmament fund

A defense commitment to Brussels seems to be the price of admission. 

This sounds like the first move in preparation of the end of NATO and US participation in Europe’s defense?

The thing is Canada doesn’t have much by way of armed forces. No European country does, collectively they could be a reasonably formidable force assuming the will to fight exists.

But it makes no sense for a lightweight like Canada to be signing up to defend Brussels absent the protection of the US umbrella.

I bet Brookfield is scoping opportunities however.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government, Europe, European Union

How America enfeebled Europe

Fighting to “rebalance” NATO, American leaders now look on the old continent with dismay. Europe cannot seem to muster the physical resources — and, still more, the cultural ones — to provide for its own defense. Even American liberals now mark this down to a late social democratic decadence, or civilizational ennui. To a certain kind of Elon Musk outrider, “Europe is cooked,” or, “Europe is a museum.”

At the end of the day there is plenty of blame to go round.

Related: Mapping Europe’s Coming Population Crash

Casting population growth as a sacred cow necessary to economic growth results in extremely harmful immigration policy as witnessed in Canada and the open borders policy of Europe and the Biden regime.

It’s an evil con job that reduces you and I to mere numbers for the likes of Carney, Brookfield and Klaus Schwab to tally.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, Europe - demographic suicide, European Union, USA

Faith, Hope, and Babies

The United States’ fertility rate has fallen to around 1.78, which, combined with the general downward trajectory, is a cause for concern. To replace the population, a country needs to maintain a rate around 2.1.

When I was a young lieutenant arriving in Germany in 1995, I was surprised by three observations: how good beer can be, how secular European society had become, and the fact that Europeans weren’t having kids.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDemography, Europe

What Canadians think about Canada joining the European Union

After reminding Canadians of the recent tariff threats and the musing of Canada becoming the 51st U.S. state, we asked if the Canadian government should look into joining the European Union. 44% of Canadians think that the Canadian government definitely or probably should look into joining the European Union, while 34% are opposed to it. About 1 in 4 Canadians are unsure about the suggestion.

As if the Liberals and NDP aren’t already economy wreckers now they want the EU to help!

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, Europe, European Union, WTF?