> Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end.
From my point of view, if POTUS blathers about annexing Canada, then the US doesn't deserve my tourist dollars, neither my Netflix subscription, neither my Amazon prime subscription. I've cut back on purchases/subscriptions from US companies as much as it was possible for me and my family. Also cancelled a trip to south east US. Purely out of spite.
Same here. There's one or two things I can't bear to cancel, but I've moved all my email from Google Workspaces to Proton, cancelled Netflix, cancelled plans to go to DEF CON, downgraded storage for Apple iCloud to just above what I need instead of way above, cancelled plans to get a new MacBook Pro this year, stopped buying groceries from companies with American owners, etc.
What I respect most about the European countries' leving tarrifs in response is when they're choosing to issue tarrifs on products that are heavily sourced from red states, and lesserly so from blue states.
You're going to have to come to terms with the fact that a growing number of non-Americans don't care about the left/right paradigm in America anymore.
They just view America itself as the problem and are deciding to detach from it as a whole.
Sending money to Netflix means sending money to the administration through taxes in the US. Funding left wing news sources in the US isn't our responsibility either.
Most stuff on Amazon is made in China anyways. Might as well order directly from Aliexpress or the producer's website. Exactly the same items, but without the American middleman.
There's definitely going to be some sort of EU-China rapprochement now. Not that China is less oppressive - they remain more oppressive, and I wouldn't like to, say, get caught with weed going into China. But they're much less loudly annoying about it.
(another one to watch out for: opiate painkillers in your hand luggage into Middle Eastern states, including Dubai.)
It's not spite, or doesn't have to be. Non US-citizens have very few ways of exerting pressure on the current administration, but money happens one of them.
The threats to Canada aren't attracting nearly as much attention as they should. The problem is people have got too used to just assuming that what Trump says is bullshit: it's just there to sound good on the news, there's no intent to actually do it. Then the tariffs hit.
If there's the slightest possibility that what he says is not bullshit, then Canada needs to take it very seriously and the entire northern hemisphere security architecture needs to permanently change.
The annexing is so unhinged that I can't be sincere, yet anything Trump had any power to do he did do. He didn't get peace in Ukraine because he can't control Russia nor Ukraine. He can attempt an Canadian invasion because he is in control of the army.
From my point of view, if POTUS blathers about annexing Canada, then the US doesn't deserve my tourist dollars, neither my Netflix subscription, neither my Amazon prime subscription. I've cut back on purchases/subscriptions from US companies as much as it was possible for me and my family. Also cancelled a trip to south east US. Purely out of spite.