"The EU is planning to hit Silicon Valley with retaliatory measures if President Donald Trump follows through on threats to impose tariffs on the bloc, in the first use of a Brussels “bazooka” that could drag services into a trade war.

The European Commission is looking to use its “anti-coercion instrument” in a potential dispute with Washington, said two officials with knowledge of the plans, which would allow the EU to target US service industries such as Big Tech.

An official said “all options are on the table” and pointed to the ACI as the toughest response available without breaching international law.

The tool, which was drawn up during Trump’s first term and subsequently used as a deterrent against China, allows the EU’s executive arm to impose restrictions on trade in services if it determines that a country is using tariffs on goods to force changes in policy.

Trump’s threat to use tariffs to coerce Denmark to hand over Greenland and to press the EU to drop enforcement action against US technology companies would qualify, officials said."

https://www.ft.com/content/7303e57e-67ca-477a-8d00-8d5213f7120c?sharetype=blocked

"R1 is impressive, but it’s not a sign the U.S. is suddenly “losing” the AI race. This is, however, a narrative that best serves Andreessen’s vast portfolio and broader agenda. His $52 billion venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is invested in defense tech startups like Anduril and AI giants like OpenAI and Meta (where Andreessen sits on the board).

Andreessen advises President Trump and is helping to staff the new administration, placing a16z partners in key positions: Scott Kupor as head of the Office of Personnel Management and Sriram Krishnan as senior adviser for artificial intelligence.

A China-fearing frenzy, whipped up by overstated claims like Andreessen’s, could unleash a torrent of government contracts, subsidies, and deregulation, rewarding the AI industry."

https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2025/02/01/marc-andreessen-just-wants-you-to-think-deepseek-is-a-sputnik-moment/

Tariffs, the EU the US and more — live from the BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cqjvg82lg4yt
h/t @fulelo
https://journa.host/@fulelo/113938418683986822
#tariffs #TradeWar #TradeWars #USpol #USpolitics #geopolitics #US #UnitedStates #EU #UK

Coincidence. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
#Tariffs #TradeWars #FLOTUS

"Varoufakis who is the Secretary-General of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, a left-wing pan-European political party he co-founded in 2016, said that the strength of the dollar is not surprising and it’s nothing new. He pointed out that soon after the launch of the euro, the euro did fall below 1 US dollar. And then it rose up and then came down.

“The US dollar is a very special currency and its value, unlike every other currency in the world, has very little to do with microeconomic fundamentals,” Varoufakis said, and gave an example after he looked at GDP per capita data.

“In the last couple of years, Mississippi, a deficit state, with a poor economy and full of struggling US citizens, is in terms of GDP per capita, richer than the United Kingdom and France.

“The reason why it appears higher in terms of GDP is because of the exorbitant value, the overpriced US dollar. To explain it, you need to look at the tsunami of capital that is flooding into the United States, for reasons that are not so much related to the fundamentals on the ground in the economy. But it has to do with the manner in which globalization has been evolving over the past 20-30 years,” Varoufaakis notes."

https://greekreporter.com/2025/01/21/yanis-varoufakis-trump-tariffs-dollar-greek-bubble/

"So what can we think when we attempt to look at the overall picture? We conclude that all essential ingredients of the neoliberal globalization have been abandoned by the mainstream economists and by Democratic administration in the US as they will be further abandoned by Trump. It is in that sense that Trump’s assumption of power on the 20th of January represents a symbolic date for the final rejection of these principles. The goals are no longer free movement of goods because tariffs stop them; movement of technology is limited because of the so-called security concerns; movement of capital is reduced because the Chinese (and most recently Japanese as In the case of US Steel) are often not allowed to buy American companies; movement of labor has been severely curtailed. So what essential ingredients of neoliberal globalization have been left intact?

My point here is not to argue whether the abandonment of these principles is good for the United States or Europe or China or the world, or not. It is rather simply to show that it was not Trump who is the only agent of change, but that these principles have been in abeyance for at least a decade or perhaps a decade and a half. The Financial Times has misled its readers by not clearly stating that its promotion of trade blocs and revision of other key principles means in reality the abandonment of neoliberal globalization as a project. This is happening because of (1) geostrategic competition with China and because (2) such neoliberal policies have domestically been harmful for Western middle classes."

https://braveneweurope.com/branko-milanovic-how-the-mainstream-abandoned-universal-economic-principles

"Lurking behind every synthetic podcast and serving of AI slop is a huge, thrumming data center: Hundreds of Hydra-sized server cabinets lined up in tight rows, running computing processes that are tens or hundreds of times more energy-intensive than ordinary web searches. And behind those is another set of data centers that train foundational AI models. To keep pace with demand, AI companies need more data centers all over the world—plus the land to put them on, the water to cool them, the electricity to power them, and the microchips to run them. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has predicted that tech companies will pour a trillion dollars into new AI data centers over the next five years.

Building out the next phase of AI, in short, is set to require mind-boggling amounts of capital, real estate, and electricity—and the Gulf States, with their vast oil wealth and energy resources, possess all three. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar have all set up major AI investment funds in the past couple of years. But as a home for new data centers and a source of investment capital, the UAE has emerged as a particularly attractive potential partner on a number of fronts—from its sheer wealth to its brand-new nuclear power supply to the relative sophistication of its own AI sector.

But there’s a rub: Any American AI partnership with the UAE is, in some way, a relationship with Sheikh Tahnoun himself—and for years many of Tahnoun’s most important technology partners have been Chinese."

https://www.wired.com/story/uae-intelligence-chief-ai-money/

"Foxconn is halting new work rotations for its Chinese employees at its Apple iPhone factories in India, and sending Taiwanese workers instead, according to five people familiar with Foxconn’s operations in India. Shipments of specialized manufacturing equipment meant for India have also been held up in China, the sources told Rest of World.

The development is likely to disrupt iPhone assembly lines in the Foxconn factories in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which produce iPhones as part of Apple’s efforts to diversify production away from China. Some of the sources said the Chinese government is responsible for the suspensions of worker deployments and equipment exports.

“Currently, the equipment and manpower are not allowed to go over [to India],” one of the sources told Rest of World. “And India doesn’t have the technology to produce the equipment.”

https://restofworld.org/2025/china-foxconn-factoriesfoxconn-stops-sending-chinese-workers-to-india-iphone-factories/

Jean Chrétien, who served as the 20th prime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003: "We also need to reduce Canada’s vulnerability in the first place. We need to be stronger. There are more trade barriers between provinces than between Canada and the United States. Let’s launch a national project to get rid of those barriers! And let’s strengthen the ties that bind this vast nation together through projects such as real national energy grid.

We also have to understand that Mr. Trump isn’t just threatening us; he’s also targeting a growing list of other countries, as well as the European Union itself, and he is just getting started. Canada should quickly convene a meeting of the leaders of Denmark, Panama, Mexico, as well as with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to formulate a plan for fighting back these threats.

Every time that Mr. Trump opens his mouth, he creates new allies for all of us. So let’s get organized! To fight back against a big, powerful bully, you need strength in numbers.

The whole point is not to wait in dread for Donald Trump’s next blow. It’s to build a country and an international community that can withstand those blows."

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-jean-chretien-canadian-leaders-donald-trump-plan/