Europe Shows Again That It Lacks A Backbone To Stand Up To Trump
07-29-2025 ~ Europe should be making no concessions of any kind whatsoever to Trump. European countries are capable of weathering the storm.
The European Union and the U.S. administration have reached a deal on international trade. Is it a fair deal for both sides? Also, what do Europeans think of President Donald Trump? And what about France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state? What does it actually mean?
Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C.J. Polychroniou tackles these questions in an interview with the French-Greek independent journalist Alexandra Boutri.
Alexandra Boutri: A new trade agreement has been reached between the United States and E.U. What’s your take on this deal?
C.J. Polychroniou: It’s an awful deal for the Europeans and a huge win for the Trump administration. The deal imposes a 15% tariff on all E.U. goods to the U.S. and compels the E.U. to boost its investment in the U.S. by $600 billion and also to buy $750 billion in U.S. energy products. With this awful deal, the Europeans have shown yet again that they lack a backbone to stand up to Trump’s bullying and intimidation tactics. In a way, the deal also reinforces the long-held view that Europe is essentially a vassal of the United States. Indeed, it is shocking to see E.U. officials trying to convince the public that the deal is a good one because it avoids trade chaos. The reality, however, is that the continent will now be even more dependent on the U.S. than ever before because it will become E.U.’s new Russia for gas.
But allow me to add something else to the question of the lack of a backbone on the part of Europe when it comes to dealing with Trump and the United States in general. Trump is also trying to push Europeans to adopt a more aggressive stance on immigration, and let’s not forget that the Dublin system has already turned Europe into a “fortress.” Trump said that immigration is “killing Europe” and urged European leaders to “stop the horrible invasion that’s happening to Europe.” This is white-nationalist doomerism, but it’s hardly breaking news that Trump is a racist with strong fascist impulses. Trumpism is a racist, neofascistic political movement led naturally by a despicable human being, a self-aggrandizing bombastic buffoon. Yet, virtually no one among Europe’s political leaders took issue with him over his racist comments. To sum it up, my own thinking on the matter of E.U.-U.S. relations at the present juncture is that Europe should be making no concessions of any kind whatsoever to Trump. European countries are capable of weathering the storm. Trump truly needed badly a trade deal with the E.U., as the U.S. economy is more fragile than most people think. Instead, however, the E.U. simply succumbed to Trump’s bullying without even putting up a fight.
Alexandra Boutri: Trump’s visit to Scotland was met with protests and demonstrations in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Would you say that Trump is unpopular in Europe?
C.J. Polychroniou: Oh, absolutely. He is extremely unpopular in most major European countries, including Scotland and England. Most Europeans see him as an enemy. Yet it is disheartening to watch Europe’s leaders bending over backward to appease Donald Trump, as they did with this awful trade deal and with a plan to increase military spending at the level that Trump wanted. E.U. citizens are totally opposed to increased military spending. A recent Eurobarometer poll showed that less than 25% of E.U. citizens want more money spent on military purposes. Only in some countries close to Russia, like Estonia, Finland, and Lithuania, was there support for more defense spending.
Alexandra Boutri: What do you make of French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that France will recognize a Palestinian state?
C.J. Polychroniou: It’s further indication that Israel has become a pariah state over the Gaza genocide. Of course, Israeli officials continue to deny that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel even denies causing mass starvation in Gaza. The whole world is lying about Gaza–except Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his far-right ministers, and the Israel Defense Forces, “the most (im)moral army in the world.” But you know the story: Anyone who criticizes Israel is an antisemite. Jews who do so are “self-hating” Jews. Like Noam Chomsky, who was one of the first in the U.S. to face this accusation, or Daniel Blatman, the Israeli Holocaust historian and head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who dares to speak of an Israeli genocide in Gaza. Of course, there is antisemitism in the world, just like there is Islamophobia. But it’s a vile form of propaganda to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
As far as Macron’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state is concerned, it’s supposed to be sending a message to Israel that its actions in Gaza are reprehensible and that it is now paying a political price. The irony here is that France and most other European countries are fully complicit in the crimes committed by the Netanyahu government in Gaza and even in the West Bank. Israel would not have been in a position to commit war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people if it weren’t for the political, economic, and military support that it keeps receiving from the U.S. and other major Western countries like Germany, France, and the U.K.
At any rate, let’s not forget that the overwhelming majorly of the U.N. member states (more than 140 countries) already recognize a Palestinian state, including a dozen or so in Europe. But what is the world doing to stop the Israeli genocide? Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said just a few days ago that “we can no longer accept massacres and famine.” So, what is the Italian government doing about it? Has it imposed any sanctions against Israel? Has it severed its diplomatic relations with the Netanyahu government? Nothing of the sort. In fact, Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, found it necessary to criticize France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state.
Western hypocrisy knows no limits. It is indeed off the mark to speak of a “moral collapse” of Western powers on account of Gaza. There has always been a moral void at the heart of the Western political establishment. To be sure, the Western legacy of colonialism by European powers continues to this day. Moreover, if the intent of Macron’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state is in order to rekindle interest in the long-defunct two-state solution, I fear that the French president is out of touch with current political developments. Israel is ramping up settlement and annexation in the West Bank. The “Greater Israel” plan is what has been happening on the ground for many years now, and the two-state solution is dead as a doornail.
Source: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/eu-trump-deal
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).
Alexandra Boutri is a freelance journalist and writer.
The Hidden Cost Of AI: How Energy-Hungry Algorithms Are Fueling The Climate Crisis
07-26-2025 ~ As AI adoption accelerates, its soaring energy demands and carbon footprint raise urgent concerns about sustainability, highlighting the need for greener technologies and policies to mitigate its environmental impact.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of modern society, revolutionizing industries, enhancing daily life, and driving economic growth. From virtual assistants to advanced data analytics, AI applications are diverse and continue to expand rapidly. However, this rapid growth comes with significant environmental implications, particularly concerning energy consumption and carbon emissions. As AI technologies become more prevalent, understanding and mitigating their environmental impact is crucial for sustainable development. A typical AI data center, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), uses as much power as 100,000 households right now, but the largest centers currently being constructed will consume 20 times that amount.
The Energy Demands of AI
AI models, especially large-scale ones, require substantial computational power for training and operation. Training sophisticated models like GPT-3 (a platform that enables natural language conversations with advanced artificial intelligence) involves processing vast amounts of data through complex algorithms, necessitating extensive computational resources. For instance, training GPT-3 with 175 billion parameters consumed approximately 1,287 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity, resulting in carbon emissions equivalent to driving 112 gasoline-powered cars for a year.
The energy-intensive nature of AI extends beyond training to deployment and inference phases. AI applications, such as image and speech recognition, natural language processing, and recommendation systems, continuously process data, resulting in ongoing energy consumption. Data centers, which house the hardware for these computations, have seen a significant rise in their electricity consumption. In 2022, global data center electricity consumption reached 460 terawatt-hours (TWh), positioning data centers as the 11th largest electricity consumer worldwide, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. In fact,projections by the IEA indicate that by 2030, electricity demand from data centers could more than double to around 945 TWh—more than Japan’s current annual electricity use.
The Carbon Footprint of AI
The environmental impact of AI is closely tied to the energy sources powering data centers. Many data centers rely on non-renewable energy sources, leading to substantial carbon emissions. In the United States, data centers accounted for over four percent of the nation’s total electricity consumption, with 56 percent of this energy derived from fossil fuels, resulting in more than 105 million tons of CO2 emissions.
Compared to other sectors, the carbon footprint of AI and data centers is becoming increasingly significant. For example, the emissions from in-house data centers of major tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple, may be over seven times higher than officially reported. This underreporting underscores the need for increased transparency and accountability in evaluating the environmental impact of AI technologies.
One analyst from the Carbon Disclosure Project noted, “There’s a major transparency gap in how companies report data center emissions. As AI workloads surge, it’s essential we close that gap.” Read more
The Last COP: Will Brazil Host A Conference That Saves The World’s Climate?
07-25-2025 ~ Thirty years have passed since the first Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Berlin (Germany). Since then, successive agreements, targets, and definitions have been ineffective in addressing the two main issues that have lingered at the COP since 1995: first, the responsibility of the rich countries for the climate catastrophe, and second, the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the COP-30 in Belém do Pará (Brazil), the world will once more have to see if these questions are addressed or ignored.
The thirty-year failure to address the question of responsibility and of emissions are interlinked. Gas emissions were 1.3% higher in 2023 than in 2022, with a growth rate higher than the rate over the decade from 2010 to 2019 when the annual emissions rose by an average of 0.8%. But it is important to recognise that only fifty-seven oil, gas, coal, and cement producers are directly linked to 80% of the world’s global fossil carbon dioxide emissions. Of these few companies, the largest emitter was ExxonMobil (United States), which was linked to 3.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide over seven years, or 1.4% of the global total. The list says a lot about the geography of emissions, with four companies following ExxonMobil: Shell (United Kingdom), BP (United Kingdom), Chevron (United States), and TotalEnergies (France). Each of these companies is associated with at least 1% of global emissions. In addition, the richest section of the US population (the top 10% of the income pyramid) was responsible for 40% of total US emissions.
Multilateral agreements are very fragile. They have targets set by states and these targets are often voluntary. There is no enforcement or penalty mechanism. The COP-16 in Cancún (Mexico) in 2010 and the COP-21 meeting in Paris in 2015 resulted in an agreement for the rich countries to create a $100 billion climate finance fund. There is nothing like that amount in any fund. In 2024, at COP-29 in Baku (Azerbaijan), the figure was raised to $300 billion. There is no guarantee that it will be met. The new target is bold. But it is also modest, since it is not even near what the countries of the Global South would require. One calculation – the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) – is for the fund to disburse $1.3 trillion; the High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance (IHLEG), meanwhile, estimates that the number should be $2.7 trillion annually by 2030. Read more
Pushing Military Spending And Neoliberal Austerity, French PM Emulates Trump
C.J. Polychroniou
07-18-2025 ~ Both the left and the far right in France see the government budget plan as something of a class war budget.
On July 4, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill“ Act into law, implementing his reactionary policy agenda. This megabill is the most sweeping legislation in modern U.S. history and elevates neoliberalism to a new stage with huge tax cuts for the rich and equally huge cuts to the social safety net, including food programs and Medicaid coverage. Indeed, those who somehow interpreted Trump’s policies as representing an end to the neoliberal order in the U.S. could hardly have been more wrong.
Now, it is the turn of the French government to show the world that neoliberalism remains the dominant organizing principle for advanced capitalist societies. Confronted with a faltering economy, big budget deficits, and record-high debt levels, the government of Prime Minister François Bayrou has unveiled a budget plan that shares some uncanny similarities with Trump’s megabill, although it is surely not as brutal as the “Big Ugly Bill” will be for most U.S. citizens.
The French budget plan for 2026 seeks to restore public finances with proposals that include slashing thousands of civil service jobs, shutting down so-called “unproductive” national agencies, cutting prescription drug subsidies, reducing health care expenditure by €5 billion, and freezing pensions and virtually all other benefits paid out by the government to 2025 levels. The controversial budget plan proposed by the French prime minister also includes abolishing two statutory holidays from the country’s annual calendar — Easter Monday and May 8. The latter, known as Victory Day, is a pivotal holiday that commemorates the victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany. The government claims that abolishing those two public holidays would generate several billion euros in additional state revenues through increased economic activity. The French prime minister has also left open the possibility of additional statutory holidays receiving the axe.
All in all, the proposed budget plan aims at €43.8 billion ($50.88 billion) in deficit reduction for 2026 in order to return the public deficit to 4.6 percent of France’s gross domestic product (GDP), from its current 5.8 percent, and to 2.9 percent of GDP by 2029.
“It’s the last stop before the cliff, before we are crushed by the debt,” Bayrou said in a speech to members of parliament, cabinet members, and journalists, invoking Greece’s debt crisis of more than a decade ago as a warning of what could be in store for France. Currently, France’s public debt is at 114 percent of the country’s GDP and is the third-largest in Europe, behind Greece and Italy.
Across Europe, neoliberals are still using the Greek debt crisis to create fear in public consciousness about government spending so they can enforce draconian austerity measures without opposition or public outcry. Incidentally, the Greek debt crisis erupted in late 2009, when the nation’s public debt-to-GDP ratio had climbed to 118 percent and interest rates began to rise substantially, with the 10-year government bond yield surging over 11 percent in late 2010 as the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio trended around 128 percent and was deemed unsustainable. Read more
The Corporate Takeover Of Housing
John P. Ruehl – Independent Media Institute
07-12-2025 ~ Corporate ownership remains a relatively small percentage of American housing. But a growing number of financial firms, tech platforms, and institutional landlords, alongside a national housing shortage, is making homeownership even less affordable.
The 2025 U.S. housing market presents a paradox. Home sales are down, and there are far more sellers than buyers, yet prices continue to hit record highs. Over the past decade, home values have surged nationwide, including in once-affordable Sunbelt cities.
Policymakers appear ill-equipped to respond to the situation. In a July 2025 interview with the New York Times, 16 U.S. mayors listed housing as one of their top concerns. During her 2024 presidential campaign, former Vice President Kamala Harris proposed tax credits for first-time buyers to alleviate the crisis, while President Donald Trump has renewed calls for interest rate cuts to help lower mortgage rates.
Homeownership remains central to the American dream, and U.S. homeownership rates have typically hovered around 65 percent “from 1965 until 2025,” according to Trading Economics. But the high-water mark came in 2004 when it reached 69 percent, and despite a temporary COVID-19-era spike, the rate has continued to inch downward. Worryingly, even among those who own homes, equity is shrinking. Many homeowners own less than half of their property’s value today, with the balance tied up in debt.
Many of the pressures are structural. Construction costs have soared, labor is in short supply, and tariffs have raised the price of materials. Zoning laws, tax regimes, and anti-density regulations have stifled urban growth, while sprawling development is hitting geographic and environmental limits. Mortgage rates remain high, and the national housing shortfall, now estimated to be more than 4.5 million, continues to worsen.
But the crisis has opened the door for new kinds of investors. A growing cast of corporate actors is moving into residential real estate, lured by the prospect of stable returns in a tightening market. Though they still own a minority of U.S. housing, these firms are often concentrated in key regions and markets. Increasingly capable of setting the terms of access to housing, their rising influence threatens to reverse the post-World War II surge in widespread homeownership.
Buildup
Large-scale corporate ownership of homes and influence over rent prices is a relatively recent development. Before 2008, most institutional investors stuck to apartment buildings and urban areas, as single-family homes were seen as too dispersed and costly to manage. That changed after the housing crash, when a wave of foreclosures flooded the market, leading to the availability of deeply discounted homes in the suburbs. Read more
Decades Of Neoliberalism Entrenched US Inequality. Trump’s Budget Made It Worse
Prof.dr. Robert Pollin – University of Massachusetts Amherst
07-12-2025 ~ Factoring in tariffs, the lowest 20 percent of income earners may lose $300; the top 1 percent will be $58,000 richer.
Donald Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which was signed into law last week, has been described as a monstrous piece of legislation. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, world-renowned progressive economist Robert Pollin provides an overview of this “disgraceful” federal budget bill. Pollin is distinguished professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The interview that follows has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
CJ Polychroniou: Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” has now become law, achieving what ultra-conservatives have been fighting for decades, which are huge tax breaks and major cuts to social safety net programs. Of course, there is a lot more reactionary stuff included in this megabill, such as hundreds of billions of dollars devoted to Trump’s anti-immigration agenda and derailing the green transition by taking an axe to clean energy and boosting, in turn, fossil fuel production. In sum, I think Ed Kilgore’s claim that this 940-page bill “is, in fact, the single most sweeping piece of legislation in American history” is quite accurate, although some of its effects won’t be felt for some time. Can you discuss specifically the economic and social repercussions of Trump’s megabill, especially in light of the view that the U.S. is the most unequal high-income country in the world?
Robert Pollin: Trump’s federal budget bill is disgraceful along multiple dimensions. We can start with its egregious distributional impacts. The bill will make the rich still richer through tax cuts while attacking the living standards, including the health and food security, of working people and the poor.
Trump and company claim that people at all income levels will benefit from the bill’s tax cuts. There is a tiny sliver of truth in this. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the Trump tax provisions will deliver an average of $40 in savings to the lowest 20 percent of income earners in 2026. Meanwhile, the richest 1 percent will end up $66,000 richer. This recalls the famous observation by Anatole France in 1894 that, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
But even these figures do not conclude the story. ITEP also notes that, once we also account for the impact of Trump’s tariffs — with these tariffs being a tax on imported products — those in the lowest 20 percent income bracket will not keep their $40 in benefits, but rather end up worse off by about $300. Meanwhile, the richest 1 percent are still better off by about $58,000.
Much more punishing still for lower-income people are the spending cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance program that now covers 85 million low-income and disabled people, along with other health funding cuts. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that, through the Trump measure, at least 17 million people will lose their coverage by 2034. In addition, cuts to the federal food security program (SNAP), on which 42 million people now depend, could eliminate this support for up to 5 million people.
Moreover, this purposeful Trump project to shower money on the rich while depriving lower-income people of health care and food arrives after nearly 50 years of neoliberal policy dominance had already skewed income and wealth inequality to extreme levels. For example, the average wage for non-supervisory workers as of 2023 was roughly equal, at about $28 an hour, to where it was in 1972 (controlling for inflation), even though average worker productivity had increased two-and-a-half-fold over this period. Meanwhile, the average CEO’s pay was 30 times higher than the average worker in 1972, but exploded to 290 times higher by 2023. In other words, the average worker’s annual income remained roughly constant at around $50,000 per year over this 50-year span, while the average CEO’s pay skyrocketed from $1.5 million to nearly $15 million. Read more