Summary
Donald Trump has demanded the European Union reduce its $131.3 billion U.S. trade deficit by purchasing more American oil and gas or face tariffs.
Trump’s comments, posted on Truth Social, come as the EU works to phase out Russian energy imports and diversify suppliers.
EU officials, while open to U.S. energy imports, criticized Trump’s approach as transactional, warning of potential retaliation.
Analysts highlight risks of tariffs to inflation and global trade. The EU plans to engage pragmatically but has prepared for heightened U.S. protectionism under Trump’s leadership.
Wow, dude really doesn’t know how the world works, huh?
Sheesh. With allies like the US, who needs enemies
Let him. He seems to think tariffs would make the EU/China/etc pay him money. They don’t. Tariffs raise the price for the person buying the good. It makes prices artificially high within the US and the US consumer pays. The seller gets the same money they always did.
Unless there’s an American alternative manufacturer who can’t currently compete in the domestic market because of price, tariffs are a total foot-gun.
At this point I’d like Trump to go nuts with tariffs. If amerika has decided that the world needs to be punished, then let amerikans burn first. They’ll keep us warm while our economies fall apart.
I didn’t decide shit, the rest of these asshats I’m surrounded by did it for me. Leave me out of it.
Why don’t the Chinese people do something about Xi? Why don’t the Russians do something about Putin? Why don’t the Israel’s do something about Netanyahu?
I didn’t decide shit, the rest of these asshats I’m surrounded by did it for me. Leave me out of it.
The world is largely full of masochists ruled by sadists.
Never underestimate people’s desire for servility in the name of stability.
The vast majority of people have an exceedingly high tolerance for their own subjugation if it means they don’t have to think or act to avoid pain or responsibility.
Okay, I admit that I basically said the same thing 3 times with different wording. Personally, I just hope that I’m not as docile as I fear that I am.
Yep. Submission is easy, revolting is hard. That’s pretty much the reason why tyrants exist in the first place.
Not voting is an endorsement. He won the popular vote.
Edit: it’s amazing how the majority here proudly announce they didn’t vote in this election. Yall post about how you stayed home and refused to vote and then in the same breath you’re crying about Trump. All this does is publicly advertise your cognitive bankruptcy. Mazel tov on that. Ya get what ya ask for.
I did vote. Not for him. So anything done by the US at this point has nothing to do with me. My decision was nullified.
Stop assuming things without complete information. Maybe I also worded it wrong.
Ain’t democracy grand? We can sit on our asses, put a ballot in a box every 4 years and if it doesn’t go our way we can just pretend nothing that happens is our fault.
Yup, 100%. Same goes for anyone who threw their vote away on a third party candidate.
They’re just as delusional as Trumpers, as they obviously will do anything they can to avoid admitting to themselves that they fucked up and taking responsibility for their actions.
Did you take responsibility for voting to the same two failure of parties before trump was even in politics?
I’ve been begging for RCV since about 2000 when W “won.”
Stupid argument, how said that if they decide the vote they would have voted for Harris? How about blaming the failure of the two party system instead of people?
“It’s not my fault the car drove into the wall! I don’t like the steering wheel, someone else should have installed a better control system!”
Lmao. Great argument. Enjoy your car crash!
What a weird comparison. Keep voting for the same terrible two parties and then complains about your country crashing.
Duopoly is bad. Trump is worse
This is toddler 101. If baby asks you for a treat, and you are going to give it to them, if they start throwing a tantrum over it, you can no lobger give it to them. You might have wanted to give them the treat, but once they start throwing a tantrum you need to not reinforce the tantrum.
100% on EU with this, don’t let toddlers think or act like thier tantrums work.
The EU should counter by tariffing the shit out of US made weapons. Fuck around with the US MIC and one will find out. The MAGAt morons fail to realize there are important EU based companies supplying machinery and components for the US oil and gas industry.
It’s going to be fun explaining to MAGA why electricity and Natural gas prices in the US rise dramatically in the next three years.
We have extremely low prices compared to the rest of the world mostly because a lot of our gas is kept domestically. Believe me energy companies would export if they could but we don’t have enough infrastructure to service the global market and the Biden administration has dragged its feet approving that infrastructure to keep prices low and satisfy environmentalists.
By promoting our domestic gas for export and removing regulations keeping export infrastructure from being built we will be raising our own prices at home…
Dumb fucks.
The problem with explaining anything to MAGAs is that anything that opposes their world view is going to be summarily rejected.
These people can’t be reasoned with.
Trump and Republicans will blame immigrants.
And they will believe him.
They blamed Obama for 9/11
Trump and Republicans will blame immigrants.
And Democrats.
Really hope the EU ignores this and just slaps counter-tariffs. The US has military power, the EU has economic power. It does not unelastically depend on imports from the US, and has a huge internal market. Teach this fucker a lesson.
It just turns into a really dumb pissing match where the poor suffer on both sides. Europe is almost entirely reliant on LNG from the US because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That’s not entirely true, Norway and Australia are the two on top of that list, the U.S. comes in fourth. I believe it would be possible to reduce the U.S. part even further and I also think it’s inevitable it happens, because Norway and Australia don’t slap tariffs on it - so they are going to be cheaper as well.
It’s like little baby learned a new word
EU: “Hey Canada, wanna do some trading?”
Absolutely. :) As long as we can be outrageously vocal about it and make it a super big deal. Also there should be dancing and chocolate treats and hopefully some cheese.
It’s amazing that a party who ran off free market economics for like 5 decades can all come down with sudden onset amnesia about the subject.
Not surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention and has half a brain.
I can’t wait for this dude to become president. It’s going to be amazing to see him bankrupt the US.
I’ve just accepted that no matter how much I try to save, or what kind of job I get, the economy will explode every ten years and I’ll get shafted.
Who needs to retire anyway.
He still thinks a trade deficit is bad.
Goddamn
Even dumber, he thinks a trade deficit means someone owes the US money.
And people actually believe him.
They already are. They’ve been replacing Russian gas and oil with US gas and oil.
And that’s all it takes for Trump to declare a win.
This is actually not his idea and it is already in motion in the EU to replace rest of Russian supplies.
It’s classic Trump. Take credit for other’s ideas.
Yup:
There is expected to be strong demand for US gas imports from EU economies. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said last month that gas from the US could be used to replace the bloc’s remaining imports of Russian LNG as the EU struggles to end its reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
“We still get a whole lot of LNG via Russia, from Russia,” von der Leyen said. “And why not replace it with American LNG, which is cheaper, and brings down our energy prices.”
Oof, transporting LNG is terrible for the environment. It costs in packaging and it leaks in transit. Honestly it would probably be better for our environment of they just took it from Russia
Browsing the comments, and there is another way this is dumb nobody has pointed out yet. Oil and gas are global commodities and Europe’s energy expenditures buoy the oil price identically whether they buy from the US or Saudi Arabia.
