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To add into what you said. EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) already affects the United States, though its impact varies depending on the sector. CBAM is big permanent change, and that will be rolled in smoothly below all this.

EU has carbon tax internally and they are rolling out CBAM to prevent "carbon exports" (manufacturing stuff outside EU and then importing those product without tax). CBAM is currently used directly some high-emission sectors: iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, cement, electricity, and hydrogen.

EU importers require granular data on the embedded emissions (both direct and indirect). US companies in these supply chains have had to overhaul how they track and verify carbon intensity down to the sub-supplier level to help their EU buyers comply with strict European reporting standards.

EU will gradually expand CBAM after allowing supply chains to adjust.

And then the Europeans suddenly discover that they cannot manufacture enough artillery shells and tanks to out-number the Russians.

You are not very informed on the EU's artillery shell production capabilities.

If anything, the major gap is the EU's lack of cheap drone manufacturing, but even that is starting to make progress with help and integration from Ukraine.

> You are not very informed on the EU's artillery shell production capabilities.

> In 2025, Russia produced an estimated 7 million artillery shells,

vs.

> Germany has rapidly scaled up artillery ammunition production, led by defense giant Rheinmetall. Output targets have surged from roughly 70,000 shells per year prior to 2022 to a projected 1.1 million to 1.5 million rounds annually by 2027–2030,

so now vs. "projected" and Russia still heavily outnumbers the former Nazis.

Which is to say give me a fricking break, I live in the closest EU and NATO capital city to Southern Ukraine, I know my shit.

Rheinmetall's current output is 1.1 million per year, aiming to hit 1.5 by 2027 and continue to scale up from there. That is just one company in one country in the EU, though they are the largest one.

The EU also simply has way more capacity to scale up shell production than Russia does, and the EU is building up stockpiles while Russia uses up everything they make.

Plus Russia can't replace easily some soviet era vehicles because nobody alive knows how to make this vehicles anymore.

> And then the Europeans suddenly discover that they cannot manufacture enough artillery shells and tanks to out-number the Russians.

Germany (by itself) is apparently out-producing the US artillery shell production.

* https://www.newsweek.com/germany-overtakes-us-in-ammunition-...

Russia's GDP is below that of Italy (and barely above Canada, who is in NATO):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

If the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'. Certainly they need to do more with current geopolitics, but there is no need to crank it to 11.

>if the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'

As an Italian there's definitely been a perceptible shift due to the increase in defense spending. Leonardo now makes TV ads (something I had never seen before), they advertise on newspapers (...)

Off topic, but it's funny to me how the Leonardo TV ads basically skips over the defense part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXytSNOt_0I

Note that GDP does not directly translate into a number of tanks and missiles produced. I doubt Italy has more weapon than Russia.

Of course, because Russia spends 7+% of its GDP on its military, and Italy 1.6%. It does say something about the relative capacity though. Russia probably cannot sustain this level of spending forever, and European countries could (continue) raising it if needed.

> Note that GDP does not directly translate into a number of tanks and missiles produced. I doubt Italy has more weapon than Russia.

Not wrong, but GDP is a rough metric of economic and industrial capacity. So if Italy wanted to, it could convert its economy to produce tanks and missiles at a similar rate as Russia is doing. And Italy is just one member of NATO:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO

If the economic capacity is in "the service sector" it's going to be just about meaningless in a war.

yes all those guys selling drinks on the beach can just take a bus to the tank factory.

> yes all those guys selling drinks on the beach can just take a bus to the tank factory.

Exactly. (What do you think happened during WW2? When war broken out everyone learned to make tanks (and planes, and machine guns, and…). In Ukraine a whole bunch of people learned how to make drones that never made one before. )

> Not wrong, but GDP is a rough metric of economic and industrial capacity. So if Italy wanted to, it could convert its economy to produce tanks and missiles at a similar rate as Russia is doing.

Italy can make more expensive tanks that would amount to a bigger GDP. It doesn't mean it'll make more and better tanks.

> Italy can make more expensive tanks that would amount to a bigger GDP. It doesn't mean it'll make more and better tanks.

Just because Italy is making one kind of tank now does not preclude them making another type of tank later on. If a design change needs to be done, the important part is that there is some kind of tank building capability around, and the rest can be adjusted as needs arise.

Chinese tanks costs 5x less than Italian ones. Same GDP, different amounts of real assets. In the past people would use the quality excuse but that's not the case anymore, the Chinese ones are probably better.

> ity. So if Italy wanted to, it could convert its economy to produce tanks and missiles at a similar rate as Russia is doing.

This is pure NAFO-oid cope, which it shouldn’t surprise me seeing the technical audience here (no Svechin stans on HN, that’s for sure, knowing your Svechin doesn’t ever bring any VC money nor big-tech employment), but still. Back to arrr stupidpol for me.

it doesnt, but it does speak to an ability to invest in tank production

dunno why youd want tanks and not drones though, when even russia's new tanks with anti-drone defenses can be taken out by 30ish drones

Idk, I think the europeans can do better than paying over 500 million dollars to manufacture none [0].

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artiller...

You are deluded, the EU is an industrial powerhouse compared to Russia, what's missing is just the political will

Uhhh, we're not doing so hot there either. https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artiller...

Please. Russia had an economy of the size of Italy.

And I said "had", because this was before Ukraine destroyed most of their oil plants, and refineries, and their navy, and their petrol fleet, and the online stores, and before they killed a big chunk of their male workforce. And before they have an increasing debt with China and NK that they will need to repay somehow.

At this point everybody knows that the Russian economy will not survive after the war is over and that the country most probably will split.

Europe can deal with a ruined post-Ukraine war Russia.

They would just stand some suffering, but for sure 500 millions of motivated people can build more and faster than 100 millions of a Russia tied by deliberate anti-efficiency rules build to please oligarchs. The only question is how much damage could Russia do, before Moscow and St Petersburg are reduced to ashes as retaliation if they dare to try the final solution.

The hybrid war is the real problem. Russia can sponsor still many street "Syrian" terrorist attacks in Sweden, or cause a train wreck here and there, or burn Malibu for basically peanuts. They can do this for years and years.

Not just software but online services. That would help us a lot and is safer anyway.

> and protect / stimulate domestic alternatives.

I really would love to see this, but the sad truth is that there are no real alternatives for a very big amount of software products. In the end, the eu residents will simply have to pay more for a lot of software products, and that's it :(

That's the initial impact, it's exactly the incentive that over time will create native competitors.

Yeah, there will be immediate pain but if EU competitors can spring up because the American software giants are disadvantaged it'll slowly erode the reliance on US's software.

I think that consumers will try to avoid the pain, and use vpns and fake addresses to get around the tariffs etc. The whole problem is that the EU is not providing an environment where software vendors can go as fast as the vendors in the US. This is not just a matter of regulations. It's the whole mindset that is too conservative to go fast. The whole 'throw 1000 things at the wall and see what sticks' is not something we europeans are used to.

> This is not just a matter of regulations. It's the whole mindset that is too conservative to go fast. The whole 'throw 1000 things at the wall and see what sticks' is not something we europeans are used to.

It's also a matter of two advantages the USA has:

1. being a homogeneous market culturally-linguistic, there are dozens of countries with very different cultures and languages in Europe, it's not as easy to scale continent-wide as it is to scale country-wide in the USA.

2. exhuberant privilege of the USD, it gives a major advantage on capital markets where capital is sloshing around in the economy, it's much easier to find billions of USD parked somewhere wanting to get better returns. The EU doesn't have this privilege, investments need to be more conservative.

Europe/EU are highly reliant on the US military and these issues are linked.

The EU has no real reliance on US military might. Russia has been shown to be a paper tiger and the EU can use Ukraine as a proxy to cripple Russia while keeping their hands relatively clean.

I wish you were right, but look at Ukraine's desperate requests for Patriot missiles and Switzerland letting the US screw them repeatedly to get F-35 and Patriot.

Patriots are a big issue now, but they are also for the US after the Iran war. You now also see European countries starting to European alternatives as a result (e.g. SAMP/T and IRIS-T). While these are also still low(er) volume, the EU controls its own destiny by switching to alternatives to US systems.

Sadly not.

Russia went into the war with armed forces that turned out as you say (possibly except the nukes, hard to tell unless they attempt to use one); the war forced them to develop substantial drone and anti-drone capabilities that the EU nations are not yet in a position to counter.

Yes and no. A lot of the drones are developed by Ukraine in cooperation with companies in EU countries and production facilities are being opened quite rapidly in European countries (e.g. VDL in NL, Innokas in Finland). The EU is pumping a lot of money into Ukraine and we learn a lot from Ukraine.

The EU would strongly prefer to have US military support, but does not fundamentally need it. In the miltiary domain, but also lots of other domains, the EU is using these fake promises they made to Trump as a mechanism to buy time while they quietly work on removing US dependencies, and reducing US leverage.

For what? Defense against Russia?

I suspect that if my country gave Putin what we give to the US - military bases where they can do whatever they please no questions asked, real-time intelligence access, unofficial favored supplier status for anything that might be control-relevant, quiet veto power over any national policy decision deemed "strategic" - then we wouldn't have to worry about invasion - from Russia anyway. Why invade what you already own?

I think that price is a little too steep, though. Not to mention that the US would then be at least as willing to topple governments/invade as Russia currently is.

Did not help Armenia for some reason

it wasn't russia that invaded armenia

Like a big naval base maybe? That should keep them from coming for you.

If you don't get it, I am talking about the Russian naval base on Crimea that helped directly in taking over Crimea.

Russia invaded Ukraine because Ukraine tried to leave Putin's sphere of influence, pretty much everyone agrees on that.

Regarding the retaliation, I’m unsure who would be hurt more. There are very few ready alternatives to the MS office suite, and none with the close integrations like AD. Most corps run on Microsoft. If those contracts get slapped with tariffs they would become unmanageable to buy.

Then, because it isn’t on-premise anymore where you could just continue running without paying for the service contract you lose direct access to the product. So that might even mean whole companies going under.

The US sells software to the EU. To me is constantly amazing that US citizens and US gov thinks it can just pull the plug without consequence to itself.

You pull the plug the money stops rolling in. I don't know if you've ever tried to sell something vs buying something but buying is a ALOT easier than selling.

You can easily choose where to buy but choosing to sell is a lot trickier. Pull the plug on AI and the EU will switch to Chinese models. Trade negotiations and relations are very fragile and difficult to curate and maintain. Very easy to rip up.

You seem to ignore the fact that changes take time.

There are entire governments in the EU with workflows built around Microsoft products that have no real 1:1 alternatives. If a governmental procedure stipulates that a ministry uses Windows w/ Office365, it uses Windows w/ Office365, no room for an argument. If anybody pulls a plug here, the consequences will be unimaginable.

It's nice that a single German state has switched to LibreOffice, but the rest of Germany, or the remaining 26 countries might take years, if not decades, to certify and permit someone else's solution.

If the plug is fully pulled, the EU could confiscate some European Azure/Office365 servers and 'put the software on the market'. Windows is even easier, I'm sure in such a situation the EU would be happy to limit the restrictions on reverse engineering to block license verification. I'm sure that there are some hard drives on European territory with the full Windows source code as well.

Copyright is a sacred cow to EU politicians. Just look at how they resp9nded to the Stop Killing Games petition. No chance they make it legal to pirate anything.

France would like a word:

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/france-has-ditch...

Tech is super important but it's not energy or food. The threat of a 'Microsoft Famine' would only lead to the EU being forced to send that money to China and develop it's own tech sector more thoroughly. The US was powerful precisely because of its allies supporting it. Threatening those same allies isn't going to get the US further ahead than it already is in the world. Yes, there would be massive disruption and lead to emergencies but the US wants to change the world order where it was already number 1 it is free to do so.

There are so many things that can happen. Since tariffs are percentual, Microsoft could lower prices to avoid that companies will migrate to European alternatives.

In an all-out economic war, anything could happen. The source code of Microsoft products probably exists somewhere in Europe (since they have European offices) and definitely binaries, since it's run on European servers. Once nobody plays by the rules anymore, all bets are off.

That said, a trade war would hurt both badly and it would be an epic fail on the side of the US administration. (Since the EU would not start such a trade war by itself.)

The EU also stopped enforcing its laws (like DMA and GDPR) against US tech companies.

They paused some investigations while the negotiations happen, but most of those are back on track now.

I agree with your top-level-ish reply - the response by the EU was certainly smart and there are some really interesting things going atm that will loosen the dependency on the US. But just for _feel good_ I would've liked at least a bit more of a fight.

But re:DMA see the most recent Apple app store post on here. Kinda feels like the EU folded too easily there as well.

We still haven't seen what the EU's reaction is to Apple's latest app store stunt.

This would not be the first time that Apple unilaterally claimed something was DMA compliant, and then the EU had to come out and say "no, that's clearly not"

“The Commission welcomes the changes made by Apple to its commercial terms,” commented a spokesperson for the European Commission. This announcement, the spokesperson continues, is “the result of close dialogue between the Commission and Apple,” after the tech giant was found in April 2025 to have breached the rules of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and ordered to take the necessary corrective measures. In light of these developments and the changes to be introduced, “the Commission will monitor Apple’s effective implementation of the new conditions.”

https://www.eunews.it/en/2026/08/18/tracking-and-new-commerc...

Not sure how credible this is though

Oh wow, I missed that they had spoken out on this. Yes, if that's real, it is truly disappointing.

You mean how they fined Google for 890 million under the DMA on July 23, 2026? Or how the Dutch AP just fined Uber for 825 million a few days ago under the GDPR?

The very fine you mentioned should have already been issued in March according to https://www.heise.de/news/Stopp-von-Google-Strafe-Schwere-Vo... (Heise is one of the most reputable German IT news platforms).

Apple recently received a very favorable settlement instead of serious fines and enforcement actions for blatantly refusing to follow the DMA for the entire time it was in force.

In November 2025, they were working on gutting GDPR; I don't know what exactly actually passed so far.

> The only real concession the EU made was just allowing Trump to tariff them at a certain rate

No. Van der Leyen also promised EU investments into the USA. This is betrayal as well; that money should go into EU countries. Or Canada.

That was kind of an estimated sum of investments european companies planned to make anyway. It is not like eu started to build up im us.

True, though the prudent move would be to stop investing in the US entirely

That's what I was talking about with the false promises.

The EU has no mechanism to make those investments in the USA, and no mechanism to force any member state or company to make investments.

They literally just made up a number and said "oh yes, we'll make a bunch of investments" with zero intention of doing anything to make it happen.

If Europe does't buy gas from Russia then that leaves Qatar and the US. Qatar does sell a lot to Europe (hence you'll notice how "friendly" Europe is towards Qatar) but is vulnerable to instability in the straight of Ormuz.

The US are making a fortune on gas at the expense of Europe an it's not that the promise to buy gas is meaningless because unenforceable within Europe, it's that it was already happening in practice. And that makes Europe even more dependent on the US (while the complaint was that we could't buy gas from Russia and depend on them).

Yes, the EU does rely on buying US gas as an important part of its energy mix. But that is true independent of whatever deal the EU struck with Trump. The EU simply does not have control of who its gas importers buy from (other than sanctions)

But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives, including investments in Canada's ability to export LNG, but also buildouts of solar, wind, and batteries.

Solar and batteries come with their own dependencies on China, but at least those are a different sort of dependency than fossil fuels. If China stops exporting solar / batteries, the ones we have will still keep functioning for decades while alternatives are built up.

> But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives

Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth:

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/12/head-of-iea-roasts-euro...

Here are some specific numbers:

https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/many-building-r...

The EU is heavily investing in renewables, but mainly to phase out coal rather than gas, and it's absolutely not electrifying its economy.

You can see this in the EU Emissions Trading System. It covers about 40% of all emissions, but leaves out buildings (dominated by gas) and transportation (dominated by oil). Since electricity is covered, it actually encourages oil and gas over electricity.

Furthermore, member states like Germany are resistant to taxing gas higher than electricity:

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/17/germany-warns-...

Despite the wars in Ukraine and Iran, gas is still encouraged over electricity in many European countries.

China and some other Asian countries have adopted the opposite approach. They aim to replace oil and gas by all possible means, including coal (although it's not the preferred choice).

While I agree I wish this would happen faster, it certainly is happening, and it's happening pretty quickly. Saying it "couldn't be further from the truth" is just silly hyperbole.

You are missing the point.

The EU has been massively increasing its imports of gas from the US since the war in Ukraine started.

Promising to buy US gas is not a false promise it is primising to do something that is already reality.

I think you also underestimate the links between government and energy companies when it comes to import policy, even if perhaps there nothing formal at EU level. On the other hand, you are also implicitly acknowledging those links when you mention pursuing alternative suppliers.

The only thing that Europe is "aggresively" doing is failing again and again on strategic issues.

Russia killing hundreds of EU citizens should be enough to stop buying gas from them.

There is plenty of gas in the EU; we decided that it was undesirable to extract. Honestly pathetic; strategic autonomy and energy security is much more important.

Yes. Strategically Europe keeps getting things wrong while, e.g., China keeps getting thingss right: they leverage their domestic coal reserves while going all in on nuclear and renewable, and they do it comprehensively with battery tech, solar panels tech, and EVs, too, as you can't lower dependency on foreign oil if all your cars run on petrol. But in fairness they didn't have the lobby of a powerful "legacy" auto industry (another textbook case of innovator's dilemma?)

Norway, the North Sea via the UK and Algeria are right there as ready suppliers. All of which today supply more than Qatar. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-t...

Not to mention current EU stated goals is to reduce consumption by 50% by 2030. Which is coincidentally pretty US and Russia imports combined sized, and timed pretty well with the expiration date of the EU/US trade deal.

Good graph that shows how imports from the US have exploded since Russia invaded Ukraine...

The UK is the same as the rest of Europe. They don't leverage their gas reserves and have a shambolic renewables and nuclear strategy (or lack thereof...)

UK has the seventh largest wind energy production per capita in the world and is 30% of their electricity and another 15% is nuclear. Have disagreements sure, but to say they lack a strategy says more about you than them.

There must be an argument there somewhere, maybe, who knows...