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>the US has been shown to be willing to use its economic leverage for political ends over the recent few years Are there specific examples you're referring to?

>the US has been shown to be willing to use its economic leverage for political ends over the recent few years Are there specific examples you're referring to? Because this is how geopolitics and diplomacy has worked since the dawn of civilization. This isn't something unique to Big Bad USA.

Barrin92 7y ago
The entity list program against Chinese companies, the pressure on Europe to reject Huawei infrastructure (and accompanying threats in particular when it comes to natsec data sharing), the attack on the German car industry, on French agriculture, the list has been getting pretty long. And while it's true that this has been the state of affairs for most of civilisation, it wasn't for the last ~70 years. Up until recently, the US was willing to underpin global free-trade without using economic politics as leverage for short-term or one-sided political goals. Which is precisely why US tech companies have become the first choice in much of Europe and indeed around the world. Now the question is being posed if that is still a good decision. Without this interference, Europe would not think about investing billions and billions into its own cloud infrastructure, and China would not be ditching Android. It could have been smooth sailing for US companies for a long time. If this continues I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe.
- bcrosby95 7y ago
  Has this mostly been a Trump thing? Or was it going this direction before him? I was going to comment about Trump and Brexit showing us how quickly things can change in a democracy. But I'm too ignorant to know if that's a fair analysis of the situation.
  - mattrp 7y ago
    This has been long coming. At least 15 years ago I was at a global Cisco conference and I met the regional manager for emea and Northern Africa. His biggest hurdle was getting companies in his region to buy from a US vendor. In contrast, China would show up with loans, equipment, services and it was not just a company, but a team effort. We often see things through the perspective of the Cold War where Western Europe was effectively a satellite state of the United States. It ceased to be that when the Berlin Wall came down. Historically Europe has had stronger ties with its eastern partners (don’t forget the whole reason Colombus even came to America in the first place was to find a route to eastern markets). So it would not surprise me in the least that Europe would over time revert to its historical alignment regardless of who the American president is.
    - chibg10 7y ago
      I have no idea what relevance trade history from hundreds of years ago has to modern geopolitics and economic globalization. Historically, Europeans didn’t know North America even existed and the USA wasn’ta country
      - freeflight 7y ago
        The very same economic globalization that turns out to be rather destructive to the environment? I wonder if such problems might not end up forcing us to reconsider our trading priorities to account more for geographical distance, instead of just taking that as a given.
        bcrosby95 7y ago
        The US seems to be geographically closer to Europe than China, so I'm not sure how this point would make Europe choose China over the US.
        mattrp 7y ago
        I don’t think I said anything about physical proximity.
      - mattrp 7y ago
        https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/china-new-silk-road-explainer/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/china-new-silk-road-e...
- mattrp 7y ago
  >> If this continues I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe. Read Robert Kaplan’s book on this topic of decoupling (Marco polos world). In many ways it’s already happening. Regards to the Gaia effort, I’ve worked with a number of Europe based tech companies in and I find no lack of skills or innovation relative to the US. In fact, I’d say when you combine London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin and many other markets in Europe, the tech world is more widely distributed and as innovative if not more than the US market. A big part of this reason is that you have many small teams working across borders and cultures. Europe is not just the EU. For example, Norway, while it mirrors EU policy is still separate. Brexit could further diversify Europe from a regulatory landscape. What I see in the end is a place where cooperation, integration and small team competition is healthy and good for the overall marketplace. Could a Gaia effort make that better? I have my doubts... but why not give it a go? What’s wrong with having another approach added to the mix? That’s not to say there won’t be a reason for google, Microsoft and amazon in Europe... they’ve made massive investments there already and probably will continue to do so. As for a decoupling, I think it is happening but I don’t think it’s for the worse. The worlds order is reshaping and I think while there always will be a friendly Atlantic partnership, it won’t necessarily need to be supported by traditional alliances like NATO.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  >>> the US has been shown to be willing to use its economic leverage for political ends over the recent few years > The entity list program against Chinese companies, the pressure on Europe to reject Huawei infrastructure (and accompanying threats in particular when it comes to natsec data sharing) A couple points 1) political ends aren't necessarily bad ends, and 2) it's hard for me to view much of the Huawei stuff as pursuit of a "short-term or one sided" goal, given there are no American competitors for much of the Huawei equipment at issue.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  ”I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe.” I am originally from Germany and I think the main obstacle for this decoupling will be the reluctance of Europe to take defense into their own hands. When things get tough they so far always have relied on the US. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
  - woodpanel 7y ago
    I still live in Germany and I can echo your concerns. The majority of society has zero interest in doing military service, no respect for people serving in the military at best, to downright hostility at worst, as urban myths and clichés (like that the Bundeswehr is just for racist nutjobs) go largely unchallenged (it is by far and large more ethnically diverse than say most IT departments). Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good thing that we aren’t a militarist country. But the reason for us being able to afford this kind of luxury is US protection. And thus it doesn’t matter how much some Germans are annoyed with the US, this social shunning of military service is not going anywhere. You get what you pay for. Or not...
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      I remember when the war in Yugoslavia went on. This was clearly a European thing but in the end it was the Americans that did the dirty work while the Europeans did a lot of talking but no action.
      - progre 7y ago
        Every NATO member plus a whole bunch more was involved in that.
        sinkelfink 7y ago
        The Americans did the heavy lifting, as usual.
        Ididntdothis 7y ago
- sinkelfink 7y ago
  America is helping Europe stop making a huge mistake by introducing Huawei backdoored products into its infrastructure. On one hand, you have a valuable ally who has kept Europe peaceful for 75 years, the longest period of prosperity in European history. On the other hand, you have an authoritarian communist state that runs concentration camps and murders people and harvests their organs. There shouldn't even be a question here, but there is. > the US was willing to underpin global free-trade And a terrible deal that was for the American people. Foreign policy objectives were pursued with either callous disregard for the American people or outright malice. We got completely screwed so they could create middle classes in foreign countries who hate us. > If this continues I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe. Europe has already been pushing this for a long time. Despite all we've done for them they insist on being spiteful little jerks. We've been in Europe for so long and taken care of everything for them for so long, that they grew to just count on it and they weren't very appreciative. They've lectured us for 70, well, 60 or so, years since it took some time to rebuild after everyone butt fucked the hell out of them for WWII, with no repercussions at all. Now there is a president putting America first and they don't know what to do. America is realizing that maybe we don't want to spend so much of our money protecting an ungrateful Europe and maybe Europeans can do it for themselves for a change.
simion314 7y ago
The first and recent thing I can think of is Adobe disabling their software in a South America country and did not even offered refunds at that time. This is important, some dude in White House can blackmail you or all your software will no longer work. You will say something military alias but we seen economic wars between US and Eu / Canada
- iknowalot 7y ago
  If you show the world your ass enough, this is what happens.... The BDS movement against the USA is beginning, when de-dollarization is in vogue, it will hit the US economy like a Mac Truck. Buy gold & bitcoin.
freeflight 7y ago
This is from not even a month ago [0], at least a spawned a really useful discussion around open source alternatives. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21184623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21184623

Barrin92 7y ago

The entity list program against Chinese companies, the pressure on Europe to reject Huawei infrastructure (and accompanying threats in particular when it comes to natsec data sharing), the attack on the German car industry, on French agriculture, the list has been getting pretty long. And while it's true that this has been the state of affairs for most of civilisation, it wasn't for the last ~70 years. Up until recently, the US was willing to underpin global free-trade without using economic politics as leverage for short-term or one-sided political goals. Which is precisely why US tech companies have become the first choice in much of Europe and indeed around the world. Now the question is being posed if that is still a good decision. Without this interference, Europe would not think about investing billions and billions into its own cloud infrastructure, and China would not be ditching Android. It could have been smooth sailing for US companies for a long time. If this continues I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe.

bcrosby95 7y ago
Has this mostly been a Trump thing? Or was it going this direction before him? I was going to comment about Trump and Brexit showing us how quickly things can change in a democracy. But I'm too ignorant to know if that's a fair analysis of the situation.
- mattrp 7y ago
  This has been long coming. At least 15 years ago I was at a global Cisco conference and I met the regional manager for emea and Northern Africa. His biggest hurdle was getting companies in his region to buy from a US vendor. In contrast, China would show up with loans, equipment, services and it was not just a company, but a team effort. We often see things through the perspective of the Cold War where Western Europe was effectively a satellite state of the United States. It ceased to be that when the Berlin Wall came down. Historically Europe has had stronger ties with its eastern partners (don’t forget the whole reason Colombus even came to America in the first place was to find a route to eastern markets). So it would not surprise me in the least that Europe would over time revert to its historical alignment regardless of who the American president is.
  - chibg10 7y ago
    I have no idea what relevance trade history from hundreds of years ago has to modern geopolitics and economic globalization. Historically, Europeans didn’t know North America even existed and the USA wasn’ta country
    - freeflight 7y ago
      The very same economic globalization that turns out to be rather destructive to the environment? I wonder if such problems might not end up forcing us to reconsider our trading priorities to account more for geographical distance, instead of just taking that as a given.
      - bcrosby95 7y ago
        The US seems to be geographically closer to Europe than China, so I'm not sure how this point would make Europe choose China over the US.
        mattrp 7y ago
        I don’t think I said anything about physical proximity.
    - mattrp 7y ago
      https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/china-new-silk-road-explainer/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/china-new-silk-road-e...
mattrp 7y ago
>> If this continues I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe. Read Robert Kaplan’s book on this topic of decoupling (Marco polos world). In many ways it’s already happening. Regards to the Gaia effort, I’ve worked with a number of Europe based tech companies in and I find no lack of skills or innovation relative to the US. In fact, I’d say when you combine London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin and many other markets in Europe, the tech world is more widely distributed and as innovative if not more than the US market. A big part of this reason is that you have many small teams working across borders and cultures. Europe is not just the EU. For example, Norway, while it mirrors EU policy is still separate. Brexit could further diversify Europe from a regulatory landscape. What I see in the end is a place where cooperation, integration and small team competition is healthy and good for the overall marketplace. Could a Gaia effort make that better? I have my doubts... but why not give it a go? What’s wrong with having another approach added to the mix? That’s not to say there won’t be a reason for google, Microsoft and amazon in Europe... they’ve made massive investments there already and probably will continue to do so. As for a decoupling, I think it is happening but I don’t think it’s for the worse. The worlds order is reshaping and I think while there always will be a friendly Atlantic partnership, it won’t necessarily need to be supported by traditional alliances like NATO.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
>>> the US has been shown to be willing to use its economic leverage for political ends over the recent few years > The entity list program against Chinese companies, the pressure on Europe to reject Huawei infrastructure (and accompanying threats in particular when it comes to natsec data sharing) A couple points 1) political ends aren't necessarily bad ends, and 2) it's hard for me to view much of the Huawei stuff as pursuit of a "short-term or one sided" goal, given there are no American competitors for much of the Huawei equipment at issue.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
”I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe.” I am originally from Germany and I think the main obstacle for this decoupling will be the reluctance of Europe to take defense into their own hands. When things get tough they so far always have relied on the US. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
- woodpanel 7y ago
  I still live in Germany and I can echo your concerns. The majority of society has zero interest in doing military service, no respect for people serving in the military at best, to downright hostility at worst, as urban myths and clichés (like that the Bundeswehr is just for racist nutjobs) go largely unchallenged (it is by far and large more ethnically diverse than say most IT departments). Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good thing that we aren’t a militarist country. But the reason for us being able to afford this kind of luxury is US protection. And thus it doesn’t matter how much some Germans are annoyed with the US, this social shunning of military service is not going anywhere. You get what you pay for. Or not...
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    I remember when the war in Yugoslavia went on. This was clearly a European thing but in the end it was the Americans that did the dirty work while the Europeans did a lot of talking but no action.
    - progre 7y ago
      Every NATO member plus a whole bunch more was involved in that.
      - sinkelfink 7y ago
        The Americans did the heavy lifting, as usual.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
sinkelfink 7y ago
America is helping Europe stop making a huge mistake by introducing Huawei backdoored products into its infrastructure. On one hand, you have a valuable ally who has kept Europe peaceful for 75 years, the longest period of prosperity in European history. On the other hand, you have an authoritarian communist state that runs concentration camps and murders people and harvests their organs. There shouldn't even be a question here, but there is. > the US was willing to underpin global free-trade And a terrible deal that was for the American people. Foreign policy objectives were pursued with either callous disregard for the American people or outright malice. We got completely screwed so they could create middle classes in foreign countries who hate us. > If this continues I'll give it 10-20 years before there's a major decoupling even between the US and Europe. Europe has already been pushing this for a long time. Despite all we've done for them they insist on being spiteful little jerks. We've been in Europe for so long and taken care of everything for them for so long, that they grew to just count on it and they weren't very appreciative. They've lectured us for 70, well, 60 or so, years since it took some time to rebuild after everyone butt fucked the hell out of them for WWII, with no repercussions at all. Now there is a president putting America first and they don't know what to do. America is realizing that maybe we don't want to spend so much of our money protecting an ungrateful Europe and maybe Europeans can do it for themselves for a change.

simion314 7y ago

The first and recent thing I can think of is Adobe disabling their software in a South America country and did not even offered refunds at that time. This is important, some dude in White House can blackmail you or all your software will no longer work. You will say something military alias but we seen economic wars between US and Eu / Canada

iknowalot 7y ago
If you show the world your ass enough, this is what happens.... The BDS movement against the USA is beginning, when de-dollarization is in vogue, it will hit the US economy like a Mac Truck. Buy gold & bitcoin.

freeflight 7y ago

This is from not even a month ago [0], at least a spawned a really useful discussion around open source alternatives. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21184623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21184623