Edit: Thanks for the responses, I am still looking for a signal that tells my post is sarcasm multiplied by cynicism.
The EU is realizing that one of their major trade partner, who they trusted with critically important goods and services, might pull the rug under their feet.
Not to mention that the EU in itself is already a huge achievement in terms of free trade agreements between EU countries.
I expect the EU commission will take a _very_ long time to actually act on this tho. Maybe we'll see Schrems III first.
Furthermore, Canada should apply for EU or EEA membership.
Close, but not quite the same. (e.g. free movement of labor would be cool)
This tells me the resistance isn’t principled at all, but simply grandstanding.
The situation with China hasn't fundamentally changed in the last two months. People operate under the assumption of some kind of stability in this relationship. The West imports and exports products from/to China, with some restrictions: critical infrastructure like antennas cannot be built by Huawei in many countries, for instance. People in the West wouldn't use a Chinese email provider, etc. Today China is not an ally, but not an enemy either; rather a partner. There is no reason to expect a change in behaviour right now. It doesn't mean that the West agrees with everything that China does, of course.
Now regarding the US, it has fundamentally changed in the last two months. From the US government threatening to invade allied countries to actively destabilising them through people close to Trump downright making nazi salutes. On top of threatening militarily, the US is attacking its ex-allies economically with tariffs. The people in power in the US are explicitly talking about destroying Europe, and the US is now becoming an ally of Russia (which again makes it look like an enemy to the West).
Two months ago, people were operating under the assumption that the US was an ally. Now it's a partner that is going down the slope of becoming an enemy. Go ask if Canadians or Europeans feel threatened by China right now. Ask the same question about the US.
So yes: people are more scared of the US right now, and the US look more like enemies than China right now.
> This tells me the resistance isn’t principled at all, but simply grandstanding.
TL;DR: It is obviously resistance, against the US becoming an enemy. There are two obvious reasons for finding alternative to US products:
1. If it hurts the US economy (and therefore the US citizen), the hope is that maybe they will realise that Trump is not helping them and push for stopping this madness. The US won't get back to beeing trusted allies anytime soon (that ship has sailed), but they could stop from becoming enemies of the West.
2. National security: the US cannot be trusted, so it is very urgent for the West to turn to alternatives and run away from the US as fast as they possibly can.
You can argue the rights and wrongs if you want but all that matters is the US cannot be trusted.
Depending on global interconnectedness of markets has not and will not save us. We need to divest and disconnect from all economies which are not reliable liberal democracies which broadly share our values.
I would include in this Hungary: We should be giving serious thought to how to kick them out of the EU.
In this case, no I don't think Romania should be kicked out. Restrictions on party membership are complicated, but it seems here the courts have applied Romania's electoral law. We are going to have to be smart to avoid situations like this in other EU countries, where Russian, Chinese or US money are used to support non-democrats.
Europe is big enough as an internal market to sustain a good quality of life for the majority of the population — even if our 1% are disadvantaged relative to those in US, Russia. We have the capital and resources to defend ourselves too. We can open outward to Canada, Australia, democratic parts of Asia, Africa. But we need to avoid any dependence on powerful authoritarian regimes like China, India, the US, Indonesia etc.
Civilisation is organising in larger and larger groups - everyone becoming more dependent on each other and having laws and so on to resolve problems instead of fighting.
.....so somehow, for the sake of making Star Trek and all those wonderful science fiction stories possible.....we have to get that dependence back somehow. I'm joking but not joking. Some Americans are reasoable and somehow, for the world to survive, we have to find some way to help reasonable people all over the world to work together. So we can reach the science fiction future.
As a first step we could perhaps agree that individual people could come and live in Europe and participate in our democracy?
I think physical presence is actually quite a good precondition for participation. At least people physically present have some skin in the game.
With a transition period, I'm not sure I'd have a big problem cutting many other links with non-democratic countries. I agree with your ideals but all evidence is that trading and communication links and other sources of interdependence will be abused. We need to have policies which respond to that.
As it looks now, there might be a limit on the scale of global collaboration. There's nothing that says that the trend of global depenence and collaboration will continue (in fact, it is reversing now).
He even threatened to invade a country that is part of the EU