Why is Spain such an attractive place for data centers? Seems costly due to high temperatures. But maybe those costs can be offset by the viability of solar power?

No shit they are. Even after all this blows over, as it inevitably will, they’re still gonna be huge… but what might be a small loss percentage-wise is still quite big when you’re as big as Microsoft.

Here in the nordics they seem to have almost every company and almost every municipality as their customer, if there’s a rule coming in saying public data must be in Europe or something like that — that’s a lot of dollars lost. Same if just a percentage or two of companies decide they’re not fans of American tech anymore.

No no, the Russia collaborators are the actual politicians. This is just an aide.

I’m not 100% sure about the economics of tariffs, but my interpretation is that the US are shooting themselves in the foot more than us. And if we can project an image of a stable level-headed trading partner and create good trade relations with India, China and countries in Africa and South America that might be more valuable in the long run than our US trade relations.

Basically, if US wants to hamper their own economy, let them. Meanwhile we’ll be Open For Business™ and picking up all the good stuff they left behind.

While I do think the EU is lacking the balls to do this, there’s also some strategy to consider here. It certainly would be lovely if the EU would be more defensive, but also more damaging to the EU economy (at least in the short run, probably for a long time).

China is being painted as enemy number one, and there’s long-standing beef between the countries. Trump lost or is losing the trade war, and needs to make himself not look weak. Meanwhile China wants to project strength internally. Whatever is happening between closed doors, China has everything to gain from humiliating the US at this point. Trumps incompetence is already evident, they just need to fuel the flames.

With the EU, the situation is wildly different. EU doesn’t really want to project power, they want to project exactly as much power as is necessary not to seem weak but no more. It wants to show that it’s a level-headed free trade partner ready to take the lead in the free world, the fairest and most stable market in the world.

…that’s my take on it anyway. USE! USE! USE! USE! 🇪🇺

So based. Any chance that they’ll win?

What does unofficial recognition mean? Can a country do anything unofficially?

Of course not, to even entertain this idea is ridiculous.

An EU-China summit will be held in July, both sides announced.

Don’t know why, but this feels hype.

I guess MAGA people will see this as a win? Since imports are down 2x much as imports. If the value of the goods in these containers are roughly equal, that should mean smaller trade deficits?

My impression as an outsider (some, but limited, exposure to Finnish politics) is that the Finns have the right way of dealing with these far right, maybe. What they always do it seems like is to create a coalition government of the largest parties, including the far right. This keeps them from riding the underdog wave of support for years, and exposes their incompetence in real political issues (usually these parties only have one well-formulated stance, and that is anti immigration - that’s the solution to every single other issue).

I’m welcome to criticism if my outsider perspective is misinformed. (-:

day before yesterday, 105. yesterday 125. today 145.

so I guess 165 tomorrow?

Maybe he’s doing it to displease someone…

160 people is a very tiny force, feels unlikely that this is China’s official (official between Russia and China) contribution. China is a country with twice the population of Europe, and 160 guys is all they send to help?

This explanation feels more likely:

One of the captured soldiers claimed he paid 300,000 rubles (roughly $3,000) to a middleman in China to join the Russian military in exchange for the promise of citizenship, Ukraine’s Luhansk military unit press service told Ukrainian Pravda earlier in the day.

I think this but it’s just the people seeing his tweet immediately before he lifted the restrictions.

Market doesn’t know if the tariffs are even coming back, and are taking the chance to buy back low.

Aight so, we have two huge economic powers in the world and one that’s lesser but still very big. The two huge powers are fighting each other to the death, destroying each others economies as well as their own. Lets go EU Century? 🙏

When linking the video above, I noticed they have a newer one kind of on this topic. I found it interesting, maybe you will too: Europe’s Military is Weak - But Is That America’s Fault?

Is this a rhetoric question? Because if you have the answer I’m interested to know.

If not, I don’t know. At 2:18 this video references a previous attempt to re-arm Europe, and that one of the reasons it never got through was because the US didn’t like it. It seems to be referencing the Saint-Malo declaration, but I’ve yet to be able to confirm US role in this.

Well, getting US out of Europe is probably a good thing in the long run. In the short run, maybe not so sure. That’s a lot of troops to replace.

We are? I was under the impression that this had stopped, and that we now only do so indirectly in ways that are difficult to track (e.g. India importing raw materials from Russia, refining and shipping it to Europe).

Fully agree with your analysis that most of this is about Trumps ego and an attempt at asserting power.

Surely there is zero political support for this in Europe. Of course we’re hurting badly from the tariffs, but at least in my circle I don’t see anyone supporting bending over to any demand he sends us.

Almost as soon as Trump was reelected, von der Leyen suggested opening negotiations to buy more American liquefied natural gas (LNG). But POLITICO reported that the U.S. had, in response, offered no clarity about how a deal would work.

Don’t quite follow this though, does the EU need more fossil fuels? Aren’t we moving away from it? Is this aimed at replacing russian natural gas?