I wonder how low it will go. I was tentively planning a holiday trip to New York and another to a conference in Chicago. Both of which are totally off the cards having seen the horror stories of people having their phones searched, refused entry and even being detained for extended periods without justification.

Instead, I think I’m going to finally make a long wished trip to Canada.

I do feel sorry for those working in the US tourism and hospitality industry. It’s hardly well paid work and often filled by new migrants and the young / students. It won’t start recovering until the craziness of ICE abates but it’s the sort of damage that is fast to take place and takes a long time to heal once it’s reversed - and a reversal isn’t even on the cards for the foreseeable future.

This is a nonsense. The drinks industry don’t want bourbon tariffs in the hope that will mean there won’t be tarrifs on EU booze. But there are blanket tarriffs on all EU products, so relenting on Bourbon specifically will do nothing but benefit the US drinks industry.

Robert Habeck is right - the EU is in a position of strength standing together and should target any response to most hurt the US President.

The US will have blanket tarrifs which are essentially a tax on Americans. The EU can’t directly affect those but it also should not have blanket tarrifs on US goods as that will just damage the EU economy further. Instead it should have targeted tarrifs and other measures designed to hit the US (particularly republican states - thats why bourbon was picked in the first place), and meanwhile work with other tariff hit countries to lower the cost of business in their directions.

One way to look at it, is if its now 20% more expensive to sell resources and goods to the US, its actually 20% relatively cheaper to do business with the rest of the world. So thats where growth is going to come from. Tarrif US stuff that strategically benefits Europe (cars for example), don’t tariff other US stuff so the EU benefits and look to the rest of the world for growth and opportunities.

In some ways the US is handing the EU a golden opportunity to take over much of the US economic influence and power around the world.

Also they dont “owe” the US anything. Trump has a cretinous understanding of economics.

This is just Mafia like extortion. It doesnt really matter now if/when these tariffs are undone - Trump has totally destroyed the US reputation as a reliable ally and trade partmer.

No deal with the US is worth the paper its written on, as everything is dependent on the whims of one person.

Presidential systems are sources of weakness and instabilty it seems. They’re no better than monarchs, and the whole system can easily be twisted into dictatorship. Look at Russia and now the US.

You need a whatsapp account still to use a bridge like thjs. The bridges are for Matrix which is an open source messaging network.

Beeper is built using matrix, and is owned by an American for profit company that also owns WordPress. They’re hosting the bridges, and they encrypt your chat but the bridges are vulnerable to service operators like WhatsApp not locking them out.

Personally I am going for Signal (which ia run by an American non profit) and SMS, and completely leaving WhatsApp.