As I always said, the US never cared about the defense expenditure of European countries except as a way to bolster US exports.
It was always about extortion and never about defense.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Yep, they were fine with 'footing the bill for European defense' as long as enough members bought F35s and whatever other pointless toys the US produced. Only France basically stuck with producing everything domestically.
Trump never really understood what that unspoken part of the bargain really was about. If Europe is going to actually spend 2% of GDP, they're going to keep that money domestically as much as possible instead of sending all that spending overseas in dollars.
You'd think a businessman as bigly smart (people tell him all the time, many people) as he is would understand this.
I still don't know if he's just stupid or if he's just doing what Putin wants by undermining NATO. I guess both could be true at the same time.
He's a dealer, not a businessman. Deal ≠ business economics ≠ national economics ≠ global economics.
If you apply the "art of the deal" to the global economy, you'll wreck it. Well, if you apply his "art of the deal", you'll wreck basically anything except you're own wallet.
A del would imply he’s good at negotiation. He isn’t. He’s good at leveraging people, but mostly that’s been illegal. If he was good at deals, he wouldn’t have messed up international relations, which is deal making, but more complex. He’s a rich kid that fell upwards and inspired a cult following through sheer luck.
"Here's a tariff! Fuck you!"
We don't trust you anymore. We won't buy from you
"Noooo, but you must!"
Fuck 'em.
Have they thanked us for buying their weapons yet…
And I don’t think they were wearing the right suits …
I dunno I heard some American with a spray tan say that they didn't need Europe or Canada...
Let’s ditch the American weapons.
According to two of the sources, Rubio said any exclusion of U.S. companies from European tenders would be seen negatively by Washington,
Ah ah ah ! "Would be seen negatively"... Ah ah ah !
Plsplspls buy from mee. Give that sweet sweet money. I neeed it soooo bad ~USA
Well ... We want you to put the orange turd in jail and quit being dicks to everybody. You can't always get what you want, can you?
EU not purchasing weapons from America; that's shocking! Anyway.
Yea, we know that american interests wants that. European (allies?) are, understandably, not comfortable with that though.
I wonder if he understands the conflict between "open market" and "tariffs," or if this is just a case of him not understanding that other countries get to make their own policy, or what.
I don't want the patient of the US to be operating under Maxim 13.
This is not about tariffs. If you buy US weapons, the US has some control over their use. You generally need ammunition, spare parts, service the weapons and for some more modern ones access to US servers. The contracts also usually include clauses of needing US permission to resell those weapons.
There were some rumors that the US forbid US made weapons to be given to Ukraine for some time. The EU does not want something similar to happen, if Russia attacks them.
This may not be only about tariffs, but they play into it, if only by making other countries unhappy with us.
Sounds like the US is looking for reason to either sell their weapons ..... or use them
Any way you slice it ..... war means profit
I hope USA doesn't sell to Russia...
I'm shocked.
Lol, but this is a manufactured problem. Eat shit military industrial complex, you evil warmongers
Maffia. All of them.