[freitasm]

> this seems pretty hard to argue against!

Removing consumer protection would be something hard to argue against too, but yet, here we are: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-cfp...

"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide variety of operations inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his new role as acting director."

Nothing of this makes sense in that all these actions don't seem to make life easier or better for citizens in particular or the world in general.

[altacc]

A significant part of the animosity towards the EU and Trump's threat of tariffs is its consumer protection and preventing US companies, especially US tech companies, from doing whatever the hell they want.

A major difference between the US and EU is what the TikTok nonsense proved: the US is happy for a US company, aligned to Trump's authority, to track, influence and commodify its users at will; whereas the EU doesn't want any company to have that power regardless of location.

[scotty79]

Do you think Trump understands how tarifs work exactly? Or is it just something he learned other countries are afraid of but he has no idea that American importers and their customers are gonna pay them (and he shares this misunderstanding with more than half of the population)?

[milkshakes]

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5121390-trump-sa...

[scotty79]

This article doesn't indicate that he knows what tariff mechanistically does. Only that it will take inflict some amount of suffering on American citizens and possibly force manufacturing back into America.

[altacc]

He knows how they work: he threatens them and his supporters cheer, he implements them and people negotiate. There are other, some would say better, ways to get the same effects but tariffs are Trump's go to. In the metaphor "when you have a hammer everything is a nail" maybe Trump is the hammer and tariffs the nail?

[scotty79]

I'd say tariffs are a hammer, every international issue looks like a nail and Trump is the simpleton that keeps swinging.

[hnbad]

While this is true in principle, it's worth adding the caveat that EU countries have also been pushing for backdoors to encrypted communications in order to expand law enforcement access. Of course while this contradicts the stance on privacy the EU put forward with the GDPR (which sneakily redefined the right to privacy and control of your personal data as an indelible human right btw).

But in case anyone thinks this is a dunk on the EU: this is still not as invasive as the US law enforcement's powers of warrantless surveillance which have repeatedly blown up the EU-US frameworks for data sharing (Privacy Shield and its other iterations, which Mr Schrems seems to have personally made a sport of shooting down faster than they get implemented). It's also not entirely contradictory as the focus here is on protecting the rights of people against corporations while still providing means for the state to violate those rights when necessary (similarly to how the state can violate your right to free movement through incarceration or your right to bodily autonomy by shooting you, neither of which seem to upset the people who'd think this one is a gotcha).

Considering the EU's main function is being a transnational economic region (if you ignore all the fluff about shared values and history and instead follow the definition of "a system's function is what it does"), it's absolutely true that the EU is remarkably restrictive on what corporations can do compared to the US - even before Trump.

EDIT: The two sibling comments prove my point: while EU member states have been pushing for legislation like providing backdoors to encrypted communication, this is neither unique to the EU nor a contradiction and the US already has far wider reaching measures in place.

Consider for example the Switzerland-based CIA and BND (Germany) shell company that distributed backdoored encryption to hostile nations which Germany backed out of when the CIA defended distributing the same technology to friendlies without informing them or their intelligence agencies. Or literally any of the Snowden leaks, which described not only mass surveillance of US citizens but also espionage against US allies (infamously including wiretapping then-chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone) to a degree none of the EU member states have ever done anything comparable to - and which those mostly didn't act on because of the importance of maintaining good terms with the US. Or the post-9/11 legislation which not only allowed warrantless surveillance with gag orders (which is why "canaries" became popular in cryptography communities) but even literally killing or abducting and indefinitely incarcerating US citizens without a trial - not to mention torture.

You can criticize the EU for state overreach. You can't do so by using the US for grounds of moral superiority - not even moral equivalence. You can argue about different attitudes to free speech, gun ownership or the right to self-defense (e.g. castle doctrine), sure. All of these are valid grounds for debate. But the US government can (according to its own jurisdiction) legally do so many more things to both its own citizens and non-citizens both within and outside its borders that trying to use it for a libertarian "win" against the EU seems farcical at best.

[oblio]

And another factor is that those surveillance laws haven't passed, despite some member states pushing for them since at least 5 years ago.

It's an ongoing war.

[_blk]

...Seems more like the EU reserves that power to itself, which I'd argue is even worse

[ben_w]

Every national government tracks people, including the USA, so Americans get the worst of both worlds.

[tcptomato]

Why would it be worse?

[Sharlin]

Everything about it makes perfect sense because pesky things like consumer protection and occupational safety cut into the profits of the owning class.

[mlinhares]

Looks like we'll have leaded gas back in pumps pretty soon.

[Symbiote]

The target to replace lead water pipes was abandoned by Trump yesterday.

[JumpCrisscross]

> target to replace lead water pipes was abandoned by Trump yesterday

Source?

I'm only finding a Guardian article about Congressional Republicans planning a CRA action [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/03/republicans-...

[consp]

Got to keep people mad and dumb I guess.

[rayiner]

Slippery slope fallacy. And bad politics. Reflexively defending State department ops to destabilize foreign countries through a putative foreign aid organization by hand having about leaded gas (in the context of a guy who restarted the EV industry) is how you get to this point in history.

[test6554]

I guess I'll just have to become a shareholder

[callc]

Too late the 0.1% took all the cookies and didn’t learn how to share as children

[exe34]

I'm just going to buy cake at this point.

[blindriver]

CFPB was responsible for trying to fine creative ways to control other companies, and by debanking others. This was Elizabeth Warren’s doing and a complete farce. As Zuckerberg said, Meta was brought in front of the CFPB by Warren and he was confused because Meta isn’t a bank.

[hypothesis]

Was it before or after he tried to pull off that Libra thing?

[pavlov]

I worked at Facebook when the Libra thing happened, and it was obviously meant to be a global bank that evades banking regulations by sprinkling crypto magic.

When it launched, employees were told that we'd soon be able to receive a portion of our salaries in Libra. Every practical feature of the system was effectively a Facebook bank account where the unit of currency was tied to a basket of major currencies. The rest was smoke and mirrors.

So yeah, Zuck feigning surprise about being dragged in front of CFPB was just an act (like most of what he does in public).

[oblio]

> When it launched, employees were told that we'd soon be able to receive a portion of our salaries in Libra.

LOL, crypto-company scrip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip) coupled with a touch of pump (and possibly dump).

[unethical_ban]

I'll have to look into that. But giving these people any good faith is quite charitable to say the least.

[turtlesdown11]

> CFPB Warns that Digital Marketing Providers Must Comply with Federal Consumer Finance Protections > Tech firms that use behavioral targeting of individual consumers regarding financial products are liable for violations

Oh, ok.