Thread

EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

693 points · 905 comments · hackernj

noir_lord · 1789555669 · focus · HN ↗
Good, if the middle power democracies don't align/work together they are going to get torn apart in the struggle between the US and China.
1. krona · 1789556716 · focus · HN ↗
  70% of Canadian exports are to the US. 6% to the EU. Why would e.g. Poland want to enter a trade war with the US on Canada's behalf?
  1. ajuc · 1789557927 · focus · HN ↗
    Polish export to US is about 3% of its total export and import - about 5% of Poland's total import. Not much to lose, honestly. We trade more with Czech Republic.
    Polish export to EU is 74% of its total export and import is about 60% of its total import.
    Economically - whatever's good for EU is good for Poland and US barely matters.
    graemep · 1789559246 · focus · HN ↗
    What about the importance of that trade. The US exports a lot of critical things that cannot be supplied from elsewhere. Everyone is heavily reliant on American technology.
    krzyk · 1789559863 · focus · HN ↗
    Like what specifically?
    graemep · 1789560128 · focus · HN ↗
    The hardware is produced in Asia but American controlled. its still a dependency on being supplied by American companies.
    "Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Just AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
    krzyk · 1789560457 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, but services are easier to replace than hardware. And control is something you have, and then you don't have if the country in which you operate decides otherwise (or US presidents throws another tantrum).
    Companies use AWS because it is there and others used it, so they got ball rolling. It doesn't mean one couldn't replace it with another service, most probably more pricey one. If there would be some kind of war, then one doesn't need to have servers in US, and European ones are right there.
    You can't easily replace e.g. lithium or other metals.
    microtonal · 1789561224 · focus · HN ↗
    After decades of globalization, everyone is just extremely dependent on everyone.
    I think hardware is a bit complicated by the way. A lot of hardware is also not US controlled. For instance ARM Holdings is British, Japanese, or global depending on how you look at it and quite a lot of vendors rely on ARM's reference designs. Europe also has a lot of important chip designers, but they are more focused on embedded systems and support chips, like NXP and ST Microelectronics.
    "Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Clouds services and payment systems, for example. Even just one American company like AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
    Why European governments and increasingly companies are trying to move away to European alternatives. It all starts small, but e.g. a bunch of governments are already disentangling from Office. The sale of the maintainer of the Dutch DigiD infrastructure to a US company has been blocked (would have happened without any blockers a few years ago).
    It's like turning a mammoth tanker, but it is slowly happening.
    Let's just hope we have critical mass before the right-wing populists take over, big tech has been intensively lobbying them in recent years [1]. So much 'for the people', like they always proclaim.
    [1] <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying-with-european-far-right-to-strip-back-eu-rules" rel="nofollow">https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying...
    graemep · 1789562264 · focus · HN ↗
    Arm is important, but for R & D. The impact of not having Arm will take a long time to be felt. The same for a lot of the others you mention. Not having a supply or Intel and AMD CPUs would be felt much faster and would be harder to find replacements for.
    > It's like turning a mammoth tanker, but it is slowly happening.
    Is it really happening? As has been mentioned on HN multiple times the EU's age verification app will only run on American controlled devices. Some countries are moving some things away from US suppliers, buts its very much one step forward then two steps back.
    > Let's just hope we have critical mass before the right-wing populists take over, big tech has been intensively lobbying them in recent years
    Unfortunately, not only them. As the article says the existing European Commission is already going in the direction big tech want, just not as far. The current British government (a historically left wing party) has also been cosying up to big tech. One of the organisations mentioned in your link has a lot of info on EU lobbying in general: <a href="https://corporateeurope.org/index%2Ephp/en/lobbying-the-eu" rel="nofollow">https://corporateeurope.org/index%2Ephp/en/lobbying-the-eu
    microtonal · 1789564166 · focus · HN ↗
    Arm is important, but for R & D. The impact of not having Arm will take a long time to be felt. The same for a lot of the others you mention. Not having a supply or Intel and AMD CPUs would be felt much faster and would be harder to find replacements for.
    ARM doesn't just do R&D, they design full CPU cores. Until recently, Qualcomm's cores were ARM's reference design with their own extensions on top. It's only since Oryon that their CPUs are more dependent (the tech was acquired through their Nuvia acquisition).
    graemep · 1789564366 · focus · HN ↗
    > ARM doesn't just do R&D, they design full CPU cores
    How is design not R & D? it is literally what the D in R & D stands for!
    pyrale · 1789629835 · focus · HN ↗
    That is the kind of discussion where people end up saying "Oh okay, but we can FIRE ZE MISSILES".
    AWS will never willingly stop serving the EU, and oil corps will (unfortunately) never willingly stop selling oil. The US govt could force it, but that would be the end of US-EU relations, economic or otherwise.
    subscribed · 1789593831 · focus · HN ↗
    Remember International Criminal Court sanctioned for investigating Israeli and American role in the crimes being committed on the Palestinian territory?
    <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvnl0elz47o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvnl0elz47o
    On top of more than 10 already.
    Or sanctioned Francesca Albanese, a UN Special Rapporteur, for her work related to human rights abuses in the Palestine.
    She can't have bank account (or other financial product), own a property or work in many sectors in countries holding meaningful bilateral relationships with the USA.
    So what services do you have in mind? :)
    data-ottawa · 1789560823 · focus · HN ↗
    So the implication is continue doing that?
    I’ve always been told don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.
    The lesson here is that you can’t rely on the US anymore. Not for military protection, not for defence procurement, and not for trade or supply chain. That legacy has ended entirely by choice of the United States.
    The problem has moved beyond monetary trade value and into existential risk.
    pyrale · 1789628676 · focus · HN ↗
    That reliance is increasingly seen as a bomb about to explode rather than a boon.

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