Calls for boycotting US products spread in northern Europe
While tens of thousands of people have joined Facebook groups in Sweden and Denmark calling for no longer buying American, Norwegian company Haltbakk Bunkers has announced that it will stop supplying US military vessels with fuel.
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I fully support this movement, but I expect it's mainly an echo bubble and will remain as such. Leave the fediverse and subreddits and most people won't even care.
The Canadian one has really taken off. Its not just on Lemmy. Im seeing more Canadian products on the checkout line than ever before and Ive even started seeing rotting American produce at our local store.
Everyone I talk to irl is limiting their US product purchases. Canadians are pissed.
Huh, would have thought American produce is too full of preservatives to rot
Oh I do believe in this one! My response was rather eurocentric, I realize that now. The Canadians are even more hurt as it stands right now, and their response is incredible.
Perhaps I'll see a greater response in my own community when the pointless tariffs also hit EU. Currently people are plenty pissed about US aligning themselves with Russia. It won't take too much to ignite it further.
I do hope that I'm proven wrong, and that the boycott US movement is doing better than I thought 🙂
It is really taking hold. Honestly, we are not far from it becoming social stigma to buy American. Showing up with a Starbuck’s cup will get noticed.
My gf (who is not on the fedivere or any social media) came to me the other day and wanted to stop buying U.S products. Not that we really did before. Spendrups make better soft drinks than Coca-Cola and Pepsi anyway.
Spendrups is a licensed Coca Cola factory. Make sure to check for any such shenanigans before buying Spendrups.
Sure they produce coca-cola under licence. But they're not owned by them. They also produce Cuba Cola and Trocadero. Vastly superiors sodas.
Same, my wife and girlfriend told me about it before I found out here. Seems to be spreading on TikTok.
Are your wife and girlfriend on good terms? 😏👉💦
It's a polycule, so yes. Like a standard relationship with two people, but it's three.
Not to discount your perspective, but I think it's important to also acknowledge the close connection that you have.
My spouse is much more tuned in to things like this than many of their peers, not necessarily because they have more interest, but because we have a close relationship and so we share stuff a lot.
I'm trying to think, apart from technology, what do I buy from American brands?
Sure there might be the odd brand that is unknowingly American, but I'm left asking "What does America export?" because I can't think of much in my life.
This sounds great. But if you didn't buy anything in the first place there's also zero effect of boycotting. Then the movement can of course succeed quite easily, but at no net gain.
I feel like you tried to dodge the elephant in the room: the tech. The hardest part to get rid of is the technology, and in particularly the tech stack. Social media, servers, windows, outlook... The dependency is real at all levels, and I've yet to hear of any company trying to escape. This is also where I believe the boycott will fail at an consumer level, people will keep using META, stream from Netflix, order from Amazon etc. Since people are still using these, so will our companies and politicians.
There's Chips from companies like intel and Software like Windows from Microsoft and Mac from Apple. Then there's digital infrastructure like Amazon and social media, or even credit cards can come from the US.
It's also not just buying software that supports the US but using it can too, because they can use their data for advertising and other goals. So you should move to open source alternatives for software that Europe doesn't have any good alternative for (eg. Linux instead of Windows) or find a European alternative.
I already use Linux though. Don't even drive and my bike is British. Most of the stuff we buy is German as we shop at Aldi.
A lot of supermarket food brands are American. You might be surprised if you start looking. Both my deodorant and toothpaste is from Unilever, for instance.
Unilever is English/Dutch so I don't think they're a concern.
Unilever is UK based and was UK/Dutch before that. Does it being a multinational make it American enough for you?
American cars are niche, but somewhat popular where I live. There's 3 companies specializing in selling and servicing American cars here in Estonia that I can think of right away, but probably more in total. But the new American car sales aren't very good because they're all so massive and expensive, the only target audience is people who like to show off AND have a lot of cash (or a lot of them are company cars tbh, you can register a big ass pick-up truck as an N1 cargo van and spend less tax if you use it for personal purposes, compared to using an M1 passenger car for personal purposes. Somehow. I don't remember the specifics).
I'd absolutely be buying myself a GMC Yukon Denali or maybe a Lincoln Navigator if 1) I was living in America with the wide ass roads and big parking spots, and everyone else driving big trucks too, 2) It had a V8 diesel available instead of the V8 petrol engine and 3) I had way too much money to spend.
Oh that's great though. I really do hope that I'm proven wrong 😊
Wouldn't say that, after Gaza people are quite used to boycott certain wares.
I know a lot of people irl which already don't buy coke or eat McDonald's anymore
I've spent a fair bit of time in Denmark, small population with fewer news sources makes thing spread VERY quickly. Not to mention, they are very patriotic. I'll ask some Danish friends about it and report back.
Same link is on the front page of reddit.com
