I don't mind buying from china, as long as they're not irreplaceable essentials (like oil). Solar panels and -batteries are fine as long as they meet safety standards and don't have backdoors, and for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. And since it's electronics, any chip and any software can be investigated and taken apart by both amateur hackers and government funded (IT) security bureaus. Nothing. Unless I missed it, but I don't think something as big as that would go by quietly.

Yes, but it won't matter. The state energy firms of EU countries are going heavily into debt to survive this crisis, and it'll just turn from "paying high electricity prices because oil is expensive" to "paying high energy prices to repay state debt".

I mean it'll help in the sense that energy supply will switch to renewable sources, sure. Great for the climate, hopefully, But it won't help in lowering energy cost.

And before you say "but solar panels". A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.

Alas, it is exactly the intermittent renewables that create a dependency on fossil fuels.

Unless you have nuclear or another reliable source like hydro, which you only get if you have the right topography for it.

> it was transparently obvious that the idea of minimum spending commitment to NATO was intended to prop up the US arms industry

...to Trump. European leaders took it literally: since the USA stopped being a reliable partner, Europe needs to depend on itself for protection. It makes zero sense to buy American weapons if you can produce/purchase them on the continent.

I agree with the argument that language evolves.

Still, "loose" is confusing because it makes me think for one second of the actual word "loose", so it breaks the cadence of reading (and thus it is not really "understood"). If the word "loose" didn't exist, I would have no problem with people misspelling "lose" in this way and eventually becoming mainstream.

Well only to a point, I don't think there's been any significant or formal "we spell this existing word like this now" in a very long time.

The only way English language really evolves now is by the addition / invention / adoption of a new word or added meaning to existing words, like yeet, influencer, youtuber, incel, looksmaxxer and simp. And a lot of them are meme words not actually used in normal parlance. Others are the wider adoption of subculture specific words and expressions, like AAVE getting adopted by teenagers / young adults.

I don't agree with those a lot. At some age, ones use of language stops/slows evolving I suppose.

They have been saying it about Russia for five years now, and while I'm sure they're hurting, it takes a lot more to fully collapse an economy, especially one as big as Russia or especially the US.

Europe is a lot more diversified than the US (subtract the whole AI / internet tech sector and US treasure bonds and you get a lot less volume than Europe) and spends more in social security which is good for the economy as a whole.

The US has inflated numbers through soft power influence throughout the whole world but that makes its current course only more self-destructive including bond yields when they come crashing down.

I don't believe it's true about the USA, and it's even less true about Europe.

Please do try to substantiate this with numbers.

How exactly?

Debt, rather the lack of any via ble means for the US to pay back even a fraction of its debt without having the world's reserve currency.

Yes, theoretically they can always print their way out, but that's just default through inflation and bond yields will correct immediately to account for it.

> just their top 10 publicly traded companies earn more than all but 2 countries

Are not European countries trying to reduce dependency on American tech giants? China was very successful in this regard. Russia is also independent but in the most incompetent way possible. The EU could do it quite well.

The USA is not a reliable partner. To send data to the USA from the EU is a fatal mistake that needs to be corrected. The risk was acceptable in the past, but not anymore.

The USA comes from a very privileged position thanks to many factors. The government is making sure that non of the conditions hold anymore.

All of these financial 'privileges' are based on the US having the world reserve currency and petro dollar. The US in the unique position of being able to 1. Print Money. 2. Externalise inflation. 3. Ensure a base load demand for it's currency based off a worlds need of oil.

These privileges were supported wholeheartedly by all the worlds 'middle' powers e.g. Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Spain, Sweden etc. Thus establishing a world order.

The US has seemingly turned on all these middle powers for no reason, decided the world order needed to change when it was already #1. The US will of course still be a superpower but it is going to lose it hegemony.

Debt is symptom not a underlying cause. As well big defense budget and very big valuations (1). This is according to Klain and Pettis diagnosis that I think is correct one or at least close to being correct (from the "Trade wars are class wars" book - do not worry this has nothing to do with socialism).

Basically they argue that US (and other trade deficit countries) and China (and other trade surplus countries) are creating mirror imbalances that would have to be rectified - either by policy actions or when driven up to conclusion by system breakage. Like Great Depression or Japan lost decade on the surplus side. And possibly inflationary crisis on deficit countries (but this is my interpretation - I do not think they claim that and I might have not understood something).

In that lenses latest political development in US does make more sense.

(1) trade deficit pushes assets price up - as dolar from trade surplus has to return to US somehow - to buy stocks for example. That would also explain why market looks so good even if "real economy" is not so hot - but as US trade deficit is big so is stock demand. Similarly trade deficit pushes unemployment up - to keep it in check federal policy has to intervene. Could be by Biden IRA or by Trump big defense spending. This in turn results in big budget deficits.

The issue isn't the debt. Debt can be paid off.

The issue is that there's a complete collapse in it's ability to pick good leadership, or at least leadership that can meet the bar of 'doesn't piss on the floor', and no path for course-correction from it. It's in the 'everyone plunder as much as you can carry' stage, and nobody cares.

(Which also means that whatever that debt will be buying will more likely than not, be incredibly stupid, and likely self-destructive.)

And what is that worth, when they failed to properly protect their allies in a war they initiated against something that was obvious and expected ? The attack on Iran has been absolutely terrible for the US's image as an absolute military power

You’re right that European nuclear is not "independent" if that means "mined entirely inside Europe". But the dependency profile is not the same for Russian pipeline gas. Uranium is globally traded, compact, cheap to stockpile relative to the energy it contains, and available from several non-Russian suppliers (Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia...). The harder choke points are conversion, enrichment, and reactor-specific fuel fabrication.

Europe does have uranium resources, for instance the Salamanca/Retortillo project, but the constraint is permitting, environmental acceptance, waste handling, and political legitimacy rather than geology. So the honest claim is not "nuclear makes Europe autarkic". It is "nuclear gives Europe a more diversifiable and stockpilable dependency than gas, provided Europe also invests in mining, conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication capacity".

> Europe sans Russia does not produce uranium

Kazakhstan is by far the largest uranium producer in the world and has a leg in Europe, west of the Ural river. The important thing is that there are more stable partners worldwide for uranium than Russia is for oil and gas.

There are deposits in Europe, the respective countries decided not to exploit them [0]. This could change depending on external pressures.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...

Conflict is not good, but wake up call that EU need means to defend itself will help long term. You cant outsource army to defend your borders.

I'm german and as you just read in the article, Rheinmentall is a german company.

And from whom do i depend on US defense? Against Russia? Who can barely make it in Ukraine? Middle east were everyone is fighting everyone and were Iran is very very pissed at the USA?

Tell me what defense do i need against whom?

This is the truth. It would only take half a dozen Republicans to stop the madness now so the obvious question is why don't they?

The political system and elite institutions have failed their country. Does the US self correct with the next two election cycles? Hard to believe right now.

> I’m not from the US and not trying to defend the US actions, but on Iraq and Gaza, much of Europe takes the same position and goes along with it (and even directly joined the wars and sent troops).

What?!

I'm not talking about the recent events when Europe not only didn't joint Trump's war but openly refused the use of its military bases. Even in the past when the so-called "coalition of the willing" was formed, Europe had the biggest protests in its history. There were not hundreds of thousands but millions people on streets.

So your picture of uniformity was already false 20 years ago, and now it's just crystal clear.