[copperx]

Which soft power are you talking about?

[petcat]

I think we're all aware that EU is trying to become more independent, but as of right now basically everything they do online, or really anything with technology at all, is American in some way. That's a lot of "soft power" and it will take decades, maybe a century, for EU or UK to replace it.

[XorNot]

Tarrifs cost US consumers not EU consumers.

If the US wants to ban AWS from operating in the EU that's just going to accelerate the shift away, for example.

[kulahan]

Sure, it's decreasing under Trump, but to pretend the richest, most militarily powerful, most culturally influential nation on the planet somehow doesn't have any soft power is... certainly a choice.

[pornel]

Republicans are spending all of US's remaining soft power on stealing Greenland.

If it ends with the Navy showing its non-soft power, Europe won't have any fucks left to give about some website.

[jjtwixman]

Yeah actually we hate you. Apparently you've still got a loft of soft power in Nigeria, though. Most Europeans are now firmly anti-America.

[polski-g]

Anyone who wants to trade in USD. Protection of maritime trade routes. Nuclear shield. Netflix, YouTube, Nvidia, OpenAI, Amazon.

[microtonal]

To be honest, only the last few holdouts in Europe still believe in the US nuclear shield. The fact that Germany is trying to make a deal with France should tell you everything.

Netflix, YouTube and OpenAI are completely meaningless and we could drop it tomorrow. NVIDIA and AWS are a different story. The only problem is that once things become transactional (as opposed to mutually trusting allies), Europe can leverage ASML and possibly ARM. So it doesn’t bring much soft power anymore, only mutually assured economic destruction.

[XorNot]

What sort of soft power do you imagine Netflix represents? It exists but it's not leverage.