EU signals desperation to avoid trade war with Trump, desire to buy American gas



President-elect Donald Trump is still months away from taking office, yet the European Union already appears desperate to cut a deal with him.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, addressed members of the European Council in Budapest, Hungary, Friday, signaling a desire to avoid a trade war with the United States and to switch from Russian to American gas.

When asked how she intends to negotiate with Trump on trade, Leyen answered, "I think first of all: Engage. Very important what we have started yesterday."

Leyen was referencing her phone call with Trump Thursday, where she apparently congratulated him on his landslide electoral victory. The German politician noted on X that they discussed defense, Ukraine, trade, and energy.

"Secondly, discuss about common interests. And there are common interests that we have," continued Leyen. "Then go into negotiations."

'They are going to have to pay a big price.'

Leyen said that liquid natural gas was among the common interests she briefly discussed with Trump this week, noting that Europe still gets "a lot of LNG via Russia, from Russia."

According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, in the first half of 2024, Europe sourced 48% of its LNG imports from U.S., 16% from Russia, 11% from Algeria, 10% from Qatar, and 4% from Nigeria and Norway.

"Why not replace it by American LNG, which is cheaper for us and brings down our energy prices?" said Leyen. "It's something where we can get into a discussion, also [where] our trade deficit is concerned."

The U.S. Census Bureau indicated Tuesday that the trade deficit with the EU in September was $23.8 billion, contributing to the year-to-date trade deficit of $173 billion.

Trump indicated in October that the EU would have to "pay a big price" for not buying enough American exports, reported Reuters.

"I'll tell you what, the European Union sounds so nice, so lovely, right? All the nice European little countries that get together," said Trump. "They don't take our cars. They don't take our farm products. They sell millions and millions of cars in the United States. No, no, no, they are going to have to pay a big price."

Politico noted that Leyen's maneuver to dodge the steep tariffs of 10% or more that Trump has threatened by promising to buy LNG is largely political theater granted the European Commission is virtually powerless when it comes to dictating European companies' purchases of gas.

"The EU doesn't buy LNG — there's a global LNG market and LNG buyers have their own contract," Laurent Ruseckas, executive director for gas markets at commodities giant S&P Global, told Politico. "It's certainly possible to do a memorandum of understanding to talk about increasing purchases but ultimately in the past that's been a way to put a political wrapper around something that was delivered by the market. And the EU is buying as much LNG currently as the market needs."

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EU poised to personally punish Elon Musk under 'censorship law' over supposed X violations



The European Union's Digital Services Act is touted as part of a regulatory strategy to "prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation."

In practice, the DSA, regarded by critics as a "censorship law," is shaping up to be a cudgel for vindictive continentals to wield against Elon Musk and his relatively open social media platform, X.

There are now indications that the European Commission is plotting to personally target Musk with monster DSA fines for supposed violations of the regulators' content moderation rules on X.

After months of investigation concerning alleged DSA violations, the European Commission announced on July 11 that X was likely in breach "in areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for research."

'We look forward to a very public battle.'

The commission complained that:

  • Anyone on X can subscribe to obtain a blue checkmark, which somehow "negatively affects users' ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with";
  • X lacks a "searchable and reliable advertisement repository";
  • X "prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping."

Thomas Regnier, a spokesman for the commission, indicated there are additional alleged breaches under consideration, noting in a statement obtained by TechCrunch, "There is no precise timeline for [the EU completing all its DSA probes of X], and the Commission continues its investigation on the two remaining suspected breaches, namely illegal content and information manipulation more generally."

Musk indicated that he would challenge the findings, tweeting, "We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth."

The commission said that a noncompliance decision finding X in breach of Articles 25, 39, and 40(12) of the DSA could mean fines of up to 6% of a platform's total worldwide revenue, to be decided by Margrethe Vestager, the commission's Danish executive vice president.

However, insidersrevealed this week to Bloomberg that the commission may instead calculate fines based on sales from all of Musk's companies, including SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and the Boring Company.

The apparent thinking behind this punitive play is that since X is a private company and under Musk's control, the billionaire is ultimately the finable entity. This logic bodes well for those foreign nationals seeking to expropriate the maximum amount of money from the American, given that X was recently valued at only $9.4 billion.

According to the insiders, Tesla Inc.'s sales would be exempt from these fines because the company is publicly traded and Musk is not in total control.

To avoid the Euro fines, X would have to bend over backward to satisfy the regulators.

"The obligations under the DSA are addressed to the provider of the very large online platform or very large online search engine," Regnier told Bloomberg. "This applies irrespective of whether the entity exercising decisive influence over the platform or search engine is a natural or legal person."

'I'm really scared by digital platforms in bad hands.'

In doing so, the EU would be following in the footsteps of the Silva regime in Brazil, which similarly treated Musk-led companies as a single group. Last month, the South American nation confiscated millions of dollars from a Starlink bank account to cover fines imposed on X.

Even if Musk successfully challenges the latest DSA complaints or bends the knee, the Europeans will likely continue trying to extract their pound of flesh.

Evin Incir, a Swedish Social Democrat member of the European Parliament, for instance, recently told Kvartal that the "DSA is an extremely important tool" to combat polarization and so-called "disinformation" on X, which she claims is adversely impacting society.

Incir indicated that the DSA would help tame the "Wild West," which is X under Musk.

European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová told Politico Wednesday that Musk was "not able to recognize good and evil."

"We started to relativize evil, and he's helping it proactively. He's the promoter of evil," said Jourová. "I'm really scared by digital platforms in bad hands."

Musk responded on X, "Věra Jourová is the epitome of banal, bureaucratic evil."

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Danger ahead: Europe's new law is 'going to impact every single American'



While Americans have been focused on the election, the European Union has been in the process of passing a new law. It’s called the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and its reach will go far beyond European borders.

In fact, “It’s going to impact every single American,” Justin Haskins, author and editorial director of the Heartland Institute, tells Allie Beth Stuckey.

“Essentially, what it does is create ESG social credit scores for companies. ... These ESG scores are designed to transform the way companies operate, the kinds of products and services that they can sell, and then, by extension, transform societies around it,” Haskins explains.

So what does a company’s social credit score depend on?

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Apparently, a variety of measures are used to determine a company’s credit score — things like “climate change,” “biodiversity,” “land and water use,” “social justice,” “LGBTQ” causes, and diversity in general.

“How diverse is your board of directors? How diverse is your management team? Like these are the kinds of things that are in these ESG scores,” says Haskins.

Even though the United States doesn’t have a social credit scoring law (most ESG initiatives exist in the private sector), Europe’s CSDDD will nonetheless hugely impact American businesses.

The law “applies to large companies that are based in the European Union” as well as “non-EU companies that do above a certain amount of revenue in the European Union, so for example Apple or McDonald's,” Haskins explains.

Further, these high-earning non-EU companies that fall under the jurisdiction of the CSDDD will be forced to adhere to its policies outside of the EU as well.

“It's not enough for them to change their policies in the EU; they have to change it in America. They have to change it everywhere they do business; that's what the law says, and if they don't, then they can be fined 5% of their total worldwide revenue, so for a company like Apple, if you do the math, that's $19 billion for one violation,” says Haskins, who predicts that “no one's going to violate this law because they can't afford to.”

If that wasn’t extreme enough, the law also applies to “almost all of the businesses that [companies under the CSDDD] work with in their supply chains, upstream and downstream, no matter where they're located or how much business those companies do in the EU.”

Haskins points to Ford as an example. Ford is an American company that does business in the EU and produces enough revenue to fall under the jurisdiction of the CSDDD.

Therefore, “All the businesses that [Ford does] business with in America are also doing these ESG scores,” he says, “so you could be a rubber manufacturer in Ohio that does no business in Europe, but you make rubber for Ford, so you also have to adhere to the EU rule, and Ford is going to be the one that imposes it on you through contractional insurances.”

Naturally, Ford will comply because if the company refuses, “then Ford gets fined 5% of their total worldwide revenue.”

“When you start playing out the ramifications of this, they’re enormous,” Haskins laments, adding that “through this [law], you can transform the entire country because you can transform hiring practices, business practices, the kinds of products that people sell and buy, the commitment to social justice goals,” etc.

“What’s the end goal?” asks Allie.

To hear Haskins' answer, watch the episode above.

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Democrats ORWELLIAN response to Trump's interview with Elon Musk shows they're TERRIFIED



Elon Musk's live interview with former President Donald Trump caused leftists around the world to panic.

Not only did media reports ignore Musk’s claim of a DDoS attack, but they instead mocked X over the “technical problems” at the beginning of the interview.

A European Union official then threatened X with more lawsuits if he didn’t censor Trump, and U.S. journalists as well as the White House suggested that Musk should face consequences for spreading “misinformation.”

“As a very large online platform, you have the legal obligation to ensure X’s compliance with EU laws, and in particular the Digital Services Act in the EU,” the official wrote in a letter to Musk.

These critics of Musk’s interview are either blissfully unaware that the tech billionaire invited Kamala Harris to do a similar interview — or they simply don’t care. Harris declined the opportunity.

Glenn Beck is horrified, calling the response “V for Vendetta, or 1984 kind of stuff.”

“They’re saying that he should not be running this interview because it’s too risky. Now, let me ask you something, America, when has speech become too risky? What was it Donald Trump said yesterday that was so scary,” Glenn says.

“These people are trying to shut down your access to any other point of view. You’ll notice they don’t say anything when Democrats say elections are stolen and the Republicans are going to steal this one now,” he continues.

While Trump had alluded to election fraud, he was discussing it in the context of using paper ballots, which help greatly to prevent election fraud.

“This is absolutely unrecognizable to me in the West. It is making Saudi Arabia look like a kind of open place,” Glenn adds.


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