BoycottUnitedStates

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/19471

The U.S. budget deficit has grown to more than $1.3 trillion in the first half of the fiscal year

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27935573

Summary

Home Depot co-founder and GOP megadonor Ken Langone blasted Trump’s sweeping tariffs as “bulls--t,” calling the 10% across-the-board rate and country-specific hikes—like 34% on China and 46% on Vietnam—“too aggressive” and poorly calculated.

Langone criticized the administration’s formula, based on trade deficits, as nonsensical.

Other prominent figures, including economists and billionaires like Stanley Druckenmiller, Bill Ackman, and Elon Musk, have also spoken out.

Critics warn the tariffs hinder negotiation and lack sound economic grounding. Langone said Trump is being “poorly advised” on trade policy.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27931079

Summary

Trump has rejected the EU's "zero-for-zero" tariff offer on cars and industrial goods, demanding instead that the bloc commit to purchasing $350 billion of American energy to offset the trade deficit.

Following his implementation of 20% tariffs on EU goods last week, which triggered significant market downturns, Trump indicated openness to negotiations while emphasizing his "America First" stance.

He also criticized EU product standards as "non-monetary barriers" designed to block American exports.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/41924766

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/10410219

cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/143757

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60644394

Dutch informatics and intelligence expert Bert Hubert explains why European governments are urgently trying to get away from the American clouds and how they do it fastest. The article is in German. Here are few excerpts translated by me using Firefox Translation.

What is happening in the EU, is that the politicians are finally waking up. They should have done this five years ago.

The Dutch Cybersecurity Center NCSC has conducted an in-depth investigation of Microsoft. In an official evaluation, it has recorded mutatis mutandis: "The USA can at any time access the European data storage. But we don't think they will do that." Of course, that has always been pure wishful thinking. [...] It remains subject to American surveillance laws.

The data transfer agreement will be cancelled soon. Either the EU Commission is pulling back the adequacy decision, which presupposes that the US is a country with an adequate level of data protection [...] or the European Court of Justice will declare it invalid.

The whole of Europe should be alarmed. We have become a digital colony of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. [...] Our officials are putting European security and independence at risk just so that they can continue to use Microsoft Outlook! That sounds idiotic, but that's how I experience administrations.

We must finally redeem the many European open source programmers. [...] At some point we stopped believing that we can write good software. Now Europe only offers SAP software as an export hit, that's it. But if we invest billions somewhere, it's in European software development.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/28204065

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60630230

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27880900

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/10333459

It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60475731

Hundreds of people protested in European cities on Saturday against U.S. President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, following a bruising week for financial markets after Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs.

https://archive.ph/TBm5g

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/41378275

You should be boycotting these companies already because they support extreme right politics by their ALEC membership:

• FedEx
• UPS
• Motorola
• Anheuser Busch
• American Express
• Bose
• Chevron
• Marlboro
• Sony
• Texaco
• Boeing (fly on Airbus instead, see how to boycott Boeing)

You should be boycotting Amazon for many reasons.

If you oppose private prisons, then you already boycott these banks:

• #BankOfAmerica (#BofA)
• #FifthThird
• #JPMorgan #Chase
• #PNC Bank
• #Suntrust
• #USBank (#USBancorp)
• #WellsFargo

Don’t think they are out of reach to Europe -- many European small banks that you assume are ethical actually outsource their investments to JP Morgan. Also, BofA uses different branding outside the US.

If you like transparency with food labeling, then you endorse labeling of #GMO food, in which case you boycott companies that lobbied against GMO labeling. There are hundreds of companies that fucked us over, but these are the top ten financers of anti-labeling lobby:

• PepsiCo
• Nestlé
• General Mills
• Coca-Cola
• ConAgra
• Campbell Soup
• The Hershey Company
• J.M. Smucker
• Kellogg
• Mondelez

Some of those mushroom into many brands. See the attached infographic.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27781103

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/2416

Ex-Präsident Obama sagte in einer Rede, Bürger, Unis und Anwaltskanzleien dürfen sich nicht einschüchtern lassen. "Das wichtigste Amt ist der Bürger", niemand anderer werde zu Hilfe kommen

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/38460251

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/41499330

https://archive.is/2025.04.04-200922/https://www.ft.com/content/b1eda0a8-6449-4fe5-b8c6-a2afebadc823

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27791056

European Union regulators are preparing major penalties against X, including a fine that could exceed $1 billion, according to a New York Times report yesterday.

The European Commission determined last year that Elon Musk's social network violated the Digital Services Act. Regulators are now in the process of determining what punishment to impose.

"The penalties are set to include a fine and demands for product changes," the NYT report said, attributing the information to "four people with knowledge of the plans." The penalty is expected to be issued this summer and would be the first one under the new EU law.

"European authorities have been weighing how large a fine to issue X as they consider the risks of further antagonizing [President] Trump amid wider trans-Atlantic disputes over trade, tariffs and the war in Ukraine," the NYT report said. "The fine could surpass $1 billion, one person said, as regulators seek to make an example of X to deter other companies from violating the law, the Digital Services Act."

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/1578

The US president, who has vowed to remake the global trade order, dismissed concerns, noting the US jobs market is strong.

cross-posted from: https://biglemmowski.win/post/5842702

Germany is financing Ukraine's access to a satellite internet network operated by French company Eutelsat, Reuters reported on April 4, citing Eutelsat CEO Eva Berneke.

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/1578

The US president, who has vowed to remake the global trade order, dismissed concerns, noting the US jobs market is strong.

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/1524

Seit seiner Rückkehr ins Weiße Haus verliert Trump keine Zeit, die USA umzubauen. Nun meldet sich Ex-US-Präsident Obama zu Wort. Die Menschen dürften nicht den Mut verlieren.

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/1426

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has criticized elements of US domestic and foreign policies, from the treatment of LGBTQ+ people in public institutions to the weakening of the transatlantic alliance.