Well, a lot of countries are switching their supply chains to LATAM and Africa for this exact reason. I think the damage might have been already done

I mean, they've been doing far worse than what they're doing to Europe now to Asian, South American and African countries for at least 70 years.

That's just it: bullying the rest of the world typically doesn't have drastic negative consequences for an economy.

China's claimed the South China Sea as its sovereign waters and has been using force against fishermen from the nations that actually have control over the water. They're continuing to threaten Taiwan in a purely ideological push. Chinese secret police have set up stations abroad to kidnap dissidents. Border skirmishes with India are not uncommon. The agreement for a democratic Hong Kong was torn up and now they're under the thumb of the CCP, same as the mainland.

Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, and of course Eastern Ukraine in 2022. They haven't had a "real" election in decades. Dissidents die suspiciously with regularity.

Both nations have supported the efforts of North Korea to further its nuclear arsenal in blatant violation of UN resolutions.

With the exception of the invasion of Ukraine, there have been zero negative consequences for any of this behavior.

Both nations have hosted at least one major international sporting event in the last 20 years. China is signing trade deals with Canada and the EU nations because, for some reason, those parties see a totalitarian single-party state as a viable alternative to the US that will never produce a "mad king", when in fact, it's almost tailor-made to do so. Construction on Nordstream 2 started after the invasion of Georgia, specifically because Europeans wanted Russian natural gas. Russian oligarchs continue to hold major interests in European nations and are free to move about the continent. Sanctions against the Russian economy over the invasion of Ukraine are dodged by dealing with intermediate parties so that many nations, including those in Europe, can do business as usual.

If you're a narcissistic psychopath - like the majority of world politicians and Donald Trump are - and you see this sort of thing happening, you're going to ask, "Why can't America play by those rules too?"

No, you are being pedantic. They did sit down and agree to suspend it because the 15% tariffs go against the agreement.

Bullies hate this one weird trick.

I don't think so. I believe it is about "Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade". It was yet to be ratified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Reciprocal%2C_Fai...

That the current US administration is behaving today not terribly unlike the UK regime of the late 18th century is not a convincing argument for the UK reasserting its historic imperial ambitions in North America or elsewhere.

Furthermore, the native populations of those western territories would probably like to have a word over UK & European rights to assert such privileges in the first place.

There was a recent article on Hackernews which has since got flagged but it was a petition where california gets to be part of denmark, because why not?

more than 200_000 people signed it & some in the hackernews comments even appreciated it with things like saying about healthcare etc.

so I can see it as a real possibility but this would invoke force given that US states cannot unilaterally secede from the union.

Edit: Forgot to write to be, my bad. Thanks to dragonwriter for seeing the edit as I agree that without the to be, the whole context completely changes

Be the chage you want to see, rather than stoop to lower levels.

>Germany, France and the UK should also revise their other US policies, regaining control of their US territories

Europe's problem is there's about as much chance of this succeeding as of Taiwan conquering mainland China. Decades of prioritising welfare over warfare and economic growth have left Europe technologically and militarily completely unable to compete with the US, in spite of Europe's significantly larger population. Europe couldn't kick Russia, a country with 10x lower GDP and a decrepit army, out of Ukraine; how could it hope to deny any land to the US?

    So I don't really follow the news

Does it matter?

You can only threaten your friends so many times before they cut you out, and Trump is going on a year straight of threatening us (Canada, but also Greenland) with annexation, and the EU with sanctions and tariffs.

It doesn’t matter if the US government are serious or are posturing, the message is clear: prepare for existential warfare (economic or militarily) or be faced with it.

I think Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech yesterday captures the shared sentiment outside of the US very well. It’s worth listening to and lays bare the cracks in international diplomacy the last 80 years.

I personally find the argument that it’s about masking something clever weak. There are two things going on: repeatedly admitting US manufacturing can’t keep up with China and desperately trying to bring it home, and “Donroe Doctrine” colonialism where the US wants to lean on the weak to extract money out of them.

Maybe next year Trump is going to say “look how strong I made NATOs military, no more freeloaders here, this was all a ruse”, but I doubt it.

And my personal raw take, as a Canadian: we’ve shown we will take a punch to the nose for the US, it’s going to be impossible to look at our relationship the same for a generation. I’ve worked for US companies (as do most of our best and brightest), we have tight security integrations, this all feels incredibly unnecessary.

This administration is awful and yes they are serious. Listening to the speech yesterday was infuriating.

I wish I could ignore all of this because I am tired man.

Who knows. But at some point it doesn't matter and it would be imprudent not to deal with it as serious.

>> or is this like just a distraction while they do something else when no one is paying attention?

"Nearly all Epstein files still unreleased a month after Congress deadline" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/jeffrey-epst...

Neither. Trump is a reality TV guy and he's running things as if it's a TV show. He's making drama for the sake of drama. He's basically one of those kids who never learned the difference between good attention and bad attention.

What is the difference? When threaten or invade in order to distract from Epstein, how is it different from threatening or invading because they want glory and look masculine as a primary goal rather then second?