These are both very long-term games. I think preventing a trade war is definitely better on the short term so I'm not opposed to a softer flavour of these directives (it's not permanent after all, they can be adapted again). Than trying to push all the levers at the same time.
I don't agree there. These tariffs hurt the American people a lot more than they hurt us.
All this is pretty much inspired by the fears of the big car companies. But we're also buying a lot less American cars, Tesla for example has been decimated in Europe. And besides them there's only really Ford.
Besides Trump constantly changes the rules. For example with his 'trade deficit' he's only looking at goods, not services. When you consider the huge amount of money going to Microsoft, AWS, Google, there's not really any deficit. Trump just makes it all up as he goes along. You can't really respond seriously to that because you don't know what will happen tomorrow, he could change his mind again.
https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20251015-01.en.html