Sure, Donnie, sure.
All bullies rely on people just rolling over and giving up without a fight. Until they can find enough people to fight their fights for themselves. And Trump is a bully. Europe must not give in. Not to Trump and certainly not to Putin.
The issue is that both Trump and Putin heavily support fascist parties in European countries. Just today Musk endorsed Germany‘s far right / nazi party again.
What will unfortunately probably happen is that European leaders will not give into the US‘s demands initially, prices rise due to trade wars and some goods possibly become inaccessible.
The lower standards of living fuel dissent and fascists get elected in EU countries who cut deals that might relieve the situation temporarily but will almost certainly enrich the fascists themselves, weaken the EU and weaken democratic values.
Luckily the EU isn’t just a single country with a central government that’s easily swayed. Hell, they usually don’t easily agree on anything. But this is something they’ll gladly shoulder together.
No one sane wants your fossil fuels Donnie
Eh, I mean. You have to buy fossil somewhere, unfortunately.
We used to buy it in great part from Russia, now we can’t. Which is a good thing. But that severely limits our options.
Even if Trump were to shut the fuck up, which would be amazing, we would probably be buying a lot of raw energy materials from USA anyway.
“Forcing” us to buy American energy is a bit like putting food in your dog’s bowl and then sternly commanding him to eat it, showing off your leadership skills.
Is there nowhere else in the world that the EU could get their oil and gas? And no alternatives to oil and gas? It would be kind of ironic if trump doing this and Musk pushing electric cars actually reduced the world’s reliance on fossil fuels!
You think we would be buying LNG from the Americas if Norway had enough gas for the whole continent?