You’re telling me that this country is capable of learning?
A lot of extrapolations are made out of the 10 people who responded.
Or maybe I want something a little more significant than "we asked around the newsroom, and 35% of fox news reporters approve of the current administration". Cool, thanks, but that's not helpful or even a useful datapoint.
The state of the art (which confirms this ~35% approval number) is far more rigorous than that.
Start with a meta-review of historical accuracy and transparency, eg: https://www.natesilver.net/p/pollster-ratings-silver-bulleti...
Details on methodology and sample size can be Googled, eg: https://poll.qu.edu/methodology/ , https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/07/24/ev... , https://www.google.com/search?q=Marquette+University+Law+Sch..., etc.
Sample size is less important than you might think, due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_proportion_confidence...
I doubt that is going to happen. Trump is going keep the strings behind the party, fucking everybody hard, until finally he dies or otherwise implodes. What is left of American democracy when that happens is a whole another thing.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...
Speaking as an independent non-voter.
see independent voters polling don’t matter in the electiona since you don’t vote. /s
Some days I feel I could start a whole revolution against taxation without representation...
Its the people that are the problem. These policies and politics will outcast Trump because middle Anerica and The South are filled with morons.
Leadership matters.
A different leader could take the country in a different direction - with the same voting base.
Eg an actual policy of isolationism instead of instigating multiple foreign conflicts.
What a sad and tired take. Trump won both the electoral and popular vote. Discounting the opinions of over half the country as morons is exactly the type of behavior that got him elected.
That's not even close to an accurate number now. There are many sources e.g. (1)
It's a shame that people mostly learn the hard way, and forget easily. But that's not the support now.
1)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-approval-falls-33-low...
that wasn't even accurate on the day he got elected, considering a third of the country did not vote at all.
It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China. The only hope the US had was an alliances with other Western-style nations, but instead it has been nothing but attacks and diminishing.
The US put countering China way behind on its priority list, below "owning the libs" and settling old scores. I am convinced that if the Iran decapitation had worked like Venezuela, which seems to have been what they expected, then Cuba would have been next.
Cuba is completely insignificant beyond some ideological value.
To get an easy win compared to Iran just before the midterms? Of course, it could end up in a mess, but it's a mess already anyway.
The point is to prop up Putin.
Attacking one of Russia's few allies and weapon suppliers is counterproductive to such a goal, even if higher oil prices also help the Russian state finances.
Yes, the Iran operation 100% served Russia and China. It could not have gone better for them.
And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win.
China yes, Russia no.
> And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win.
For this to be intentional, the USA would have needed to intend Hormuz to be closed, rather than surprised and upset by it.
(Not that it matters much, but estimates I see say about $50bn, which is closer to the destruction of Wildberries than it is to $100bn).
Maybe Trump bets on his great relations with Putin and Kim instead.
The EU should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.
> while reaping the benefits of access to your market.
Huh, what? Trade is a win-win situation: you and your people benefit from imports, too.
The only real concession the EU made was just allowing Trump to tariff them at a certain rate, and not counter-tariffing back (with various escape clauses).
While the EU response certainly wasn't a feel-good display of chest thumping, I think it was somewhat effective. He was able to strut around and feel big, and they were able to move on.
The only reason the EU would really want to apply counter tariffs against the USA would be to either make a point, or because they are actually afraid that exports from the USA could outcompete EU products unless tariffed, but this just isn't really the case right now.
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The only form of retailiation I think the EU should actually be pursuing is the equivalent of tariffs on US software. This is the area that the USA is a highly competitive 'exporter', and putting up barriers agaisnt these software services would be a good way to hurt the USA, and protect / stimulate domestic alternatives.
EU has carbon tax internally and they are rolling out CBAM to prevent "carbon exports" (manufacturing stuff outside EU and then importing those product without tax). CBAM is currently used directly some high-emission sectors: iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, cement, electricity, and hydrogen.
EU importers require granular data on the embedded emissions (both direct and indirect). US companies in these supply chains have had to overhaul how they track and verify carbon intensity down to the sub-supplier level to help their EU buyers comply with strict European reporting standards.
EU will gradually expand CBAM after allowing supply chains to adjust.
Germany (by itself) is apparently out-producing the US artillery shell production.
* https://www.newsweek.com/germany-overtakes-us-in-ammunition-...
Russia's GDP is below that of Italy (and barely above Canada, who is in NATO):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
If the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'. Certainly they need to do more with current geopolitics, but there is no need to crank it to 11.
As an Italian there's definitely been a perceptible shift due to the increase in defense spending. Leonardo now makes TV ads (something I had never seen before), they advertise on newspapers (...)
Off topic, but it's funny to me how the Leonardo TV ads basically skips over the defense part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXytSNOt_0I
Not wrong, but GDP is a rough metric of economic and industrial capacity. So if Italy wanted to, it could convert its economy to produce tanks and missiles at a similar rate as Russia is doing. And Italy is just one member of NATO:
dunno why youd want tanks and not drones though, when even russia's new tanks with anti-drone defenses can be taken out by 30ish drones
If anything, the major gap is the EU's lack of cheap drone manufacturing, but even that is starting to make progress with help and integration from Ukraine.
> In 2025, Russia produced an estimated 7 million artillery shells,
vs.
> Germany has rapidly scaled up artillery ammunition production, led by defense giant Rheinmetall. Output targets have surged from roughly 70,000 shells per year prior to 2022 to a projected 1.1 million to 1.5 million rounds annually by 2027–2030,
so now vs. "projected" and Russia still heavily outnumbers the former Nazis.
Which is to say give me a fricking break, I live in the closest EU and NATO capital city to Southern Ukraine, I know my shit.
The EU also simply has way more capacity to scale up shell production than Russia does, and the EU is building up stockpiles while Russia uses up everything they make.
[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artiller...
And I said "had", because this was before Ukraine destroyed most of their oil plants, and refineries, and their navy, and their petrol fleet, and the online stores, and before they killed a big chunk of their male workforce. And before they have an increasing debt with China and NK that they will need to repay somehow.
At this point everybody knows that the Russian economy will not survive after the war is over and that the country most probably will split.
Europe can deal with a ruined post-Ukraine war Russia.
They would just stand some suffering, but for sure 500 millions of motivated people can build more and faster than 100 millions of a Russia tied by deliberate anti-efficiency rules build to please oligarchs. The only question is how much damage could Russia do, before Moscow and St Petersburg are reduced to ashes as retaliation if they dare to try the final solution.
The hybrid war is the real problem. Russia can sponsor still many street "Syrian" terrorist attacks in Sweden, or cause a train wreck here and there, or burn Malibu for basically peanuts. They can do this for years and years.
I really would love to see this, but the sad truth is that there are no real alternatives for a very big amount of software products. In the end, the eu residents will simply have to pay more for a lot of software products, and that's it :(
Yeah, there will be immediate pain but if EU competitors can spring up because the American software giants are disadvantaged it'll slowly erode the reliance on US's software.
Russia went into the war with armed forces that turned out as you say (possibly except the nukes, hard to tell unless they attempt to use one); the war forced them to develop substantial drone and anti-drone capabilities that the EU nations are not yet in a position to counter.
I suspect that if my country gave Putin what we give to the US - military bases where they can do whatever they please no questions asked, real-time intelligence access, unofficial favored supplier status for anything that might be control-relevant, quiet veto power over any national policy decision deemed "strategic" - then we wouldn't have to worry about invasion - from Russia anyway. Why invade what you already own?
I think that price is a little too steep, though. Not to mention that the US would then be at least as willing to topple governments/invade as Russia currently is.
Then, because it isn’t on-premise anymore where you could just continue running without paying for the service contract you lose direct access to the product. So that might even mean whole companies going under.
You pull the plug the money stops rolling in. I don't know if you've ever tried to sell something vs buying something but buying is a ALOT easier than selling.
You can easily choose where to buy but choosing to sell is a lot trickier. Pull the plug on AI and the EU will switch to Chinese models. Trade negotiations and relations are very fragile and difficult to curate and maintain. Very easy to rip up.
There are entire governments in the EU with workflows built around Microsoft products that have no real 1:1 alternatives. If a governmental procedure stipulates that a ministry uses Windows w/ Office365, it uses Windows w/ Office365, no room for an argument. If anybody pulls a plug here, the consequences will be unimaginable.
It's nice that a single German state has switched to LibreOffice, but the rest of Germany, or the remaining 26 countries might take years, if not decades, to certify and permit someone else's solution.
https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/france-has-ditch...
In an all-out economic war, anything could happen. The source code of Microsoft products probably exists somewhere in Europe (since they have European offices) and definitely binaries, since it's run on European servers. Once nobody plays by the rules anymore, all bets are off.
That said, a trade war would hurt both badly and it would be an epic fail on the side of the US administration. (Since the EU would not start such a trade war by itself.)
The US are making a fortune on gas at the expense of Europe an it's not that the promise to buy gas is meaningless because unenforceable within Europe, it's that it was already happening in practice. And that makes Europe even more dependent on the US (while the complaint was that we could't buy gas from Russia and depend on them).
Not to mention current EU stated goals is to reduce consumption by 50% by 2030. Which is coincidentally pretty US and Russia imports combined sized, and timed pretty well with the expiration date of the EU/US trade deal.
The UK is the same as the rest of Europe. They don't leverage their gas reserves and have a shambolic renewables and nuclear strategy (or lack thereof...)
But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives, including investments in Canada's ability to export LNG, but also buildouts of solar, wind, and batteries.
Solar and batteries come with their own dependencies on China, but at least those are a different sort of dependency than fossil fuels. If China stops exporting solar / batteries, the ones we have will still keep functioning for decades while alternatives are built up.
Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth:
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/12/head-of-iea-roasts-euro...
Here are some specific numbers:
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/many-building-r...
The EU is heavily investing in renewables, but mainly to phase out coal rather than gas, and it's absolutely not electrifying its economy.
You can see this in the EU Emissions Trading System. It covers about 40% of all emissions, but leaves out buildings (dominated by gas) and transportation (dominated by oil). Since electricity is covered, it actually encourages oil and gas over electricity.
Furthermore, member states like Germany are resistant to taxing gas higher than electricity:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/17/germany-warns-...
Despite the wars in Ukraine and Iran, gas is still encouraged over electricity in many European countries.
China and some other Asian countries have adopted the opposite approach. They aim to replace oil and gas by all possible means, including coal (although it's not the preferred choice).
But re:DMA see the most recent Apple app store post on here. Kinda feels like the EU folded too easily there as well.
This would not be the first time that Apple unilaterally claimed something was DMA compliant, and then the EU had to come out and say "no, that's clearly not"
https://www.eunews.it/en/2026/08/18/tracking-and-new-commerc...
Not sure how credible this is though
Apple recently received a very favorable settlement instead of serious fines and enforcement actions for blatantly refusing to follow the DMA for the entire time it was in force.
In November 2025, they were working on gutting GDPR; I don't know what exactly actually passed so far.
No. Van der Leyen also promised EU investments into the USA. This is betrayal as well; that money should go into EU countries. Or Canada.
The EU has no mechanism to make those investments in the USA, and no mechanism to force any member state or company to make investments.
They literally just made up a number and said "oh yes, we'll make a bunch of investments" with zero intention of doing anything to make it happen.
I can't understand why there isn't a single country that did that.
Don't assume EU is stupid.
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/08/18/voka-invoerheffingen...
That is quite the comparison. It also doesn't seem correct at all. What world are you living in where Zohran is a populist demagogue?
N.b. if you look up 'populism' on Wikipedia a huge portion of the page explains the contested term is sociologically vague and did not have the negative connotation it does in mainstream discourse. Most people are not aware of this.
Pointless, incredibly bad faith bothsideism. Zohran was the only one in the NYC mayoral race to believe in actual democracy. Cuomo's whole campaign was "elect me because the other guy is a muslim, and I won't do anything during my mandate, like the previous mayor". Zohran did actual campaigning on issues the electorate cared about, and so far has delivered on his promises.
I don’t see news about what he has accomplished. Can you give a few examples?
In short: he has balanced the city budget with a 2% tax increase on millionaires, matching New Jersey. He's moving to give every family free childcare. He has frozen rent for rent-controlled housing, and planning the construction of 200,000 more such apartments. He's fixing potholes (that part went viral, for some reason). And more.
Support is up in every demographics, including Jewish New Yorkers, that corpo dems were insisting would be threatened under Mamdani, in a cynical attempt at instrumenting islamophobia to win the election for their do-nothing candidate instead. Crime is down.
Canada should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.
He did a pretty good explanation of the difference between theory and practice in his Rest is Politics Leading podcast interview recently :).
Sticks in my mind and well worth listening.
Since you are getting hurt you play tit-for-tat to get the other to knock it off.
So you add export taxes to items they care about (oil/fertilizer/...) and compensate the losses incurred by existing industries.
You also add tarriffs on items that have alternatives, like alcohool.
Maybe add tarriffs on items with elastic prices, say 100% tarriff on digital services. Software services will have to adjust prices so they end up the same after tarriffs since few people will accept youtube or netflix doubling in price.
This hurts both countries but will get a result - either free trade or no trade.
In the meanwhile, Trump's entourage has derivative bets on this and take massive proffits shorting everyone. For them, this is all massively profitable.
For bilateral trade it doesn't matter much whether country A imposes import tariffs or country B exposes export tariffs.
Basically, the whole talk about retaliatory tariffs is silly.
Why?, retaliatory - in response to US, tarriffs - taxes, whether on export or import, as you noted, doesnt matter much. Effect depends on who needs to either sell or buy the tarrifed items the most.
China put tariffs specifically on the sectors that voted for Trump and depended on sales to China.
When the other party is not playing the same game, or not playing in fairness, then the best game theoretical move is to cease cooperation and retaliate.