A city official in Stockholm has said the municipality has no plans to comply after one of its offices received a letter seeking to impose Donald Trump’s rollback of diversity measures, in what is believed to be the first such missive sent to a foreign government.
“It’s so bizarre,” said Jan Valeskog, Stockholm’s vice-mayor for planning. “It’s our political priorities that count, not the ones from this embassy or any other embassies.”
I don’t think we here in Europe are in the same boat as Canada. Meloni couldn’t wait to get a photo op sitting next to Trump with a huge smile and as far as I can tell it had no negative impact on her image. “Brand America” is certainly damaged in mainstream groups but I don’t see any calls to boycott the US in my country. I saw a bit of it on the news about Germany but that also seems to have disappeared quickly.
She’s ones one of the very few far right leaders to do so: most seem to have distanced themselves from Trump and America.
Further, the European far-right hadn’t really aped a lot of American-style far-right points before (for example, most such parties in Europe are way less religious, way less obsessed with trans-sexuality and homosexuality and even the anti-EU talk is significantly less since Brexit), and whilst they were starting to copy more American talking points when Trump won (there was this big Far-Right conference in Spain were they had started making speeches with more Trumpian and anti-EU tones), they have gone mum on most of that in the last few months.
As for boycotting American products, that might not be covered by mainstream media all that much, but at least from what I’ve seen there what’s going on in America does get coverage and the vibe it passes is one of problem after problem after problem, not one of “look how great America is”.
I’m Portuguese in Portugal, a country which has usually been quite pro-America, and from talking to acquaintances who aren’t very political, their opinion of America is very low nowadays and I’ve heard more than once people saying “It’s good that we’re in Europe” and “Europe is a better place”.