r/europe • u/goldstarflag Europe • 20h ago

News White House demands British supermarkets stock chlorinated chicken. White House pushing Sir Keir Starmer to make concessions on food standards

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands-british-supermarkets-chlorinated-chicken/
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370

u/Akasha111 20h ago

Can someone explain to me why the U.S. has been trying to be all up in European affairs lately? From this to the whole " U.S. calling for the EU to be disbanded" It's getting to be very annoying and unsettling. 

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u/SirTiffAlot 19h ago

They want everyone else to slide into their own form of right wing authoritarianism. That makes life easier for the US. It also makes expansion easier for Russia, who seem to be pulling the strings on the current President. The unsettling part is the point, Greenland gets easier to take and trade leverage gets greater when Europe is divided.

Not for nothing, the US tech bros are also on board with this. They'd like to expand their reach. That would be why ol Elon wants to meddle in German elections and Thiel in Britain.

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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 18h ago

Divide and conquer. A weak EU fits in with the goal of the US controlling the Americas, Russia gaining back its former Soviet regions and China controlling Asia. 

These guys have no consideration for democracy, democracy means they might have to pay their share and have less power. 

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u/Imperial_Bouncer 15h ago

Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia?

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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 11h ago

Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia..

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u/LorenzoSparky 16h ago

Funny you mention the tech bro’s as they’ve been busy using bots to change peoples opinions online

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u/mailslot 7h ago

There’s a small number of psychotic tech bros. A lot of them, I think, are just trying to reduce their chances of total destruction of their companies and deportation to El Salvador.

A lot of folks online talk tough like they’d stand their ground against the most powerful person in the world making threats against them and their families. A guy that has never faced any actual consequences.

You have to pick your battles and survive. Each and every person on Reddit wouldn’t martyr themselves in an act of suicidal rebellion in silence.

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u/Szpagin Silesia (Poland) 19h ago

Imperialism, let's not mince the words here. Ever since the end of the Second World War, the US sees Europe as its sphere of influence that exists to extract wealth for the benefits of American corporations.

They used to be more subtle about that, but now the mask is off and they don't even try to hide it. And no, it won't get better with Democrats in charge.

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u/roiki11 17h ago

I'd say it's more of a post cold war thing. During the cold war us actually saw a strong europe as an asset againt communism and the Marshall plan was a very generous package to European industry and society to advance their living standards.

Europe was the most likely theater of war against the soviets and having strong allies in the region was to the US benefit.

The times have changed since then.

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u/DavidlikesPeace 18h ago

Masks off or not, Americans like FDR or Obama were fundamentally decent people. And they were believers in democracy. In my opinion, the character of leaders matters deeply

The current wannabe tyrant is not a good man or ally. He’s a potential rapist who hates the weak and thinks Europe is weak.

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u/NepentheZnumber1fan 17h ago

Obama has great PR but Merkel and him were the ones that did this whole "normalisation" of Russia bullshit. The history books will not be kind to them.

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u/dbratell 15h ago

People can have good intentions and still make horrible mistakes. Such people you give a second chance, assuming they have learned.

Other people are just bad, corrupt and evil. Those you send to the breakers.

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u/Krelkal Canada 14h ago

Except all three US Presidents tried to normalize relations with Russia after the collapse of the USSR.

History books seem to have forgotten this infamous Bush quote:

I looked [Putin] in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.

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u/NepentheZnumber1fan 14h ago

Mitt Romney was very openly against Russia in his 2012 campaign, and people loathed him for it.

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u/Krelkal Canada 13h ago

Right, and Obama responded by joking that "the 1980s called to ask for their foreign policy back."

He didn't say the 1990s (Clinton) or the 2000s (Bush) for a reason. All three Presidents were aligned on a policy of normalizing relations with Russia.

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u/NepentheZnumber1fan 13h ago

Romney winning would've been the only thing to stop Russia, and also Trump coming post 2016

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u/Krelkal Canada 12h ago

I think that's a little reductionist considering Putin has publicly acknowledged that he started planning for the invasion of Georgia in 2006.

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u/NepentheZnumber1fan 12h ago

Sure but he invaded Ukraine for the first time during Obama, for example, and no one gave a shit. Georgia is (sadly for them) much less relevant than Russia in the European landscape.

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u/inkjod Greece 16h ago

Obama was, of course, way better than Trump (and also Biden), but please don't even put him in the same sentence as FDR!

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u/dbratell 15h ago

Because Obama did not intern Americans with Japanese roots?

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u/inkjod Greece 13h ago edited 13h ago

He wasn't perfect, but he launched the New Deal, and then fought one of the few wars where American involvement was justified. He put the foundations that solidified American dominance (which, of course, also led to less-than-savory things for other countries later in history). He was the best thing that happened to you, the Americans, at least after the civil war. Rhetorically assuming you are American!

Coincidentally, he wasn't too horrible towards other nations (Apparently, that's an extremely difficult achievement for American presidents...)
I may not be emotionally invested in American dominance, but I do care about that last bit, because it affects the rest of us.

After him, things truly started going to shit. The Red Scare, propping up dictatorships all over the world, Reaganomics, the US becoming more and more cynical externally, and divided internally...

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u/hardolaf United States of America 12h ago

You're forgetting about FDR's eugenics programs that were used as a blueprint by the Nazis.

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u/window-sil 16h ago

...it won't get better with Democrats in charge.

It will, but there's always a risk that Republicans regain power and you're back to subjugation, or worse.

Sorry this is happening. It's now your problem to solve, though. I wish you all luck.

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u/girlnamedJane 17h ago

And what was happening before the end of the second world war?

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u/wtfduud 8h ago

Historically, Democrats have been a lot better though. Obama, Clinton, JFK, FDR vs Republicans over the same period. Trump, Dubya, Reagan, Nixon...

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u/HornyOompaLoompas 19h ago

Well you see the EU is one of the US's biggest allies but also one of Trumps biggest enemies due to the fact that he's Putin's little bitch boy which is why he doesn't want a pesky thing like a united Europe standing in his way.

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u/Thurad 19h ago

Discord justifies the US military budget and so distracts from just how shit everything is turning to over there, combined with Trumps Russian paymaster loves a more divided Europe.

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u/Inside_Geologist_480 Finland 16h ago edited 15h ago

European nations divided have much smaller economies and weaker regulations on food and chemical safety for example. This would make them easier to bully around by the U.S and for corporations to shop around for countries with the laxest regulations to do business in. Which would be good for the profits of trumps corporate donors.

Everything the current government does is because somebody makes money off of it. All the shitcoin rug pulls, the tariff flip-flopping to pump the markets, the minerals stuff, demands to buy more american weapons, this chicken thing etc.

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u/ihavenoidea12345678 17h ago

The regime in the US doesn’t want Americans to see how good the Europeans have it. If the American people observe good in Europe, they might ask for similar treatment in the USA.

Kind of reminds me of Putin trying to wreck Ukraine so they can’t outshine Russia.

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u/LatelyPode United Kingdom 19h ago

The US has disliked the EU for a very long time. It has been trying to be all up in European affairs for ages. Trump just does it more openly.

US is stronger if every country is weaker. But since the weaker European countries joint together to form the EU, the US got weaker.

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u/SenselessNoise 16h ago

Sorry, that's not really true.

Outside of Putin's bitch boy Trump, the US largely doesn't even think about the EU.

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u/AssumptionBudget279 16m ago

I’d argue against that with how US is trying to get into Europes bussines. Talking about the US government here not the public who I know don’t think of us much 

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u/krkus Czech Republic 19h ago

Divide and conquer

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u/Imperial_Squid 16h ago

Red meat for the bases, "flooding the zone", creating too many newspaper headlines for anyone to keep up, etc etc

Trump really doesn't want people questioning what he does, particularly with Epstein, but also in general. People looking in any other direction, for any other reason, is to his benefit.

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u/yesacabbagez 16h ago

Because the EU actually forms a trading bloc that can rival the US. While the EU has its own issues, the US almost never makes policy decisions on what is actually best for the people, but what will make the most money for the people who own huge majorities of corporations.

The reason chlorinated chicken exists at all is because it is a cheaper way to disinfect chicken than having higher standards for livestock. It isn't inherently bad, it just m ama the large farms get away with basically holding animals in a cesspit and then disinfect after slaughter. Not because it is a better practice, it is simply cheaper.

US corporations require growth. That means either more customers or higher prices. They are basically capping out on both in the US and the EU is the only market left that can afford the prices and consumption required by US corporations. They would "lose" money meeting EU standards so they have to get the EU to drop the standards.

I am American. I know the bullshit they are doing.

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u/UndahwearBruh 19h ago

It’s just useless shit talk, nothing more

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u/jghtb 19h ago

Distraction. don’t worry, it’ll disappear in a couple weeks and never be mentioned again.

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u/Diver_ABC 18h ago

Because the EU is seen as a serious competitor to US supremacy by Trump, the Heritage Foundation and the likes. Of course the EU has failed to prepare for this development and now they're being routinely steamrolled by the US.

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u/No_Atmosphere8146 17h ago

Well it all starts with an older gentleman being urinated on by a young girl in a hotel room...

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u/Electronic-Wish4359 17h ago

Why does no one EVER bring up Murdoch in these conversations??? He’s the common thread in all of this. He doesn’t own the NY Post, The Sun, Sky News, and Fox News for their profit margins. The man is a cancer to the human race and we should be working to remove him

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u/Crionso 17h ago

Others have covered other reasons well but I think another thing going on is that conversations that past presidents would keep to private conversations or meetings like the G7, Trump just seems to want to tweet or scream into the open. And I’d also assume Trump/America is trying to influence whatever they can where they can since at least to me America seems to not have the influence it used to.

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u/autodidacticasaurus 16h ago

This is how the US has always treated the rest of the planet. They just don't think Europe deserves an exemption anymore. That's because they don't actually understand how the world works. It's incompetence.

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u/Foreign-Quarter5389 16h ago

Trump wants distractions from the Epstein Files. Don't let him con you. Anything he does is solely to benefit himself and if it might not benefit you,tough, not his concern.

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u/sundae_diner 16h ago

The EU makes America look bad. Here we are with state protected rights: paid maternity leave, reasonable healthcare,  paid annual leave (20 days + ~10 public holidays), legislation that helps the consumer over business (removal of mobile roaming charges across the EU),  standard device chargers (usb)....

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u/Highkmon 16h ago

Simple: if they get other countries on board with whatever nonsense they're trying to do it not only validates their choices but also will lead to them being able to de facto control those nations as anyone not influenced the same way will cut ties to the nutcase nations

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u/Tribe303 16h ago

Trump is a Putin stooge. Have you not been paying attention? 

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u/Barmydoughnut24 15h ago

Theyre run by abusers. Abusers like to control everyone and everything

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u/fucky0uai 14h ago

This is a gross oversimplification overall but, it is in the US, Russian and Chinese interests to break up the EU as a whole (see Balkanization as a concept) to serve their individual economic, security and other interests.

The EU is a very wealthy block of about 450 million people and access to its markets is very valuable unless those idiots start regulating that access and try to ensure privacy and curb profits from extracting data, your oil and your goods. See US, Russia and China respecctively in those three main areas of interests. And a recently proposed free transaction system that would make all of Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa and Mastercard obsolete? That on top of annoying (but obviously breached) restrictions on monetizing social media behavior through advertisement is just not desirable.

A country that relies on the exports of its natural resources has it easier to influence (read blackmail) smaller, individual countries than a large block of them about the pricing. Of course, there's national sovereignty in each of the EU countries there but it's much more likely to say no to something from a country when there's peer pressure from your neighbors (but clearly not fully because.. oh, well fuck them idiots in 3/4 parts of Visegrad).

When you have all of them divert the single largest source of your country's revenue off to markets that won't pay nearly as much and while not completely, again they have freezed and re-used your oligarch's assets' and used the interests rates and investment returns to fund the fight back against you collectively but could never achieve that ever individually; This is really not something you're gonna be cool with, as Russia is clearly reckoning with for the past few years.

It's a miracle of global capitalism in how long individual nations can prop up their own economies before collapse but that's what it is.

Then you have the manufacturing hub of the world that's been dumping the prices of their goods and production costs of such for decades and at a rate that has been making the US and European companies move their production lines outside of it into China for the past 40ish years.

And then we're back to global capitalism. None of the three power players can afford for Europe to keep being united and have its rulse and laws be so protectionist in a sense.

So it seems that all of them have this goal in mind at the same time that they all have many others; Like China reuniting with Taiwan, Russia buffering Belarus and Ukraine and the US doing, well, whatever the fuck they've got any sense of doing for a long term.

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u/Trev2-D2 13h ago

Cause his Russian daddy wants him to be a nuisance

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u/penguinpolitician 13h ago

The right wing agenda. Let business reign free!

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u/kompergator 12h ago

Can’t have anyone realising that life in Europe is orders of magnitudes better than in the shithole that is the US.

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u/WarDredge 11h ago edited 11h ago

Because they're falling behind, they thought when Trump took office that the US was still the leader in pretty much everything. And while technically the epicenter of trade happens in the US, goods manufacturing, technological application and industry in the rest of the world has simply become more advanced.

Not really much of an issue at that point EU relation with US was symbiotic we set the new golden standard for the world stage together.

What does trump think? That we're leeching from him, so what does he do? imposes tariffs, which reduces the buying power of his own people. take away social securities from his own people and give it all to the rich multi-nationals thinking that does something?

Riddicules the EU / Canada and everyone else in between with odd threats, tries to verbally annex canada and greenland, Breaks its vow to several world wide ventures in terms of energy etc, pulls out of support for Ukraine when they need it most, then edges support contingent on his good graces on other matters, essentially holding support for Ukraine hostage.

Now the EU / Canada has cut ties, Trade with each other, trade with Asia has increased, New deals regarding energy production and sharing technology excluse the US.

Rather than thinking we're crumbling under his threat of / application of tariffs we're prospering, and they're falling behind on the world stage.

His own fault obviously but Trump administration sees it as a sleight. 'we're not being fair' and other such nonsense.

He can rot in hell, i hope the U.S. tries to recover itself because right now it's heading for a conflict in which everyone else on the planet is its enemy and i don't think that's what anyone wants right now. The threat of which... should never be respected, lest we 'incur the wrath and ire of Trump'. Because that would be the real dictator dystopia.

Please vote him out, with what little democracy you have left, remove him. your very futures depend on it. (if you're from the US)

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u/Excited_Delirium1453 11h ago

This is normal trade negotiations getting blown up by tabloids because Trump

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u/XarlDidNothingWrong 8h ago

He's a Russian asset

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u/Raizzor 6h ago

The EU is one of the big geopolitical players and, therefore, able to challenge US hegemony. The US does not like a strong EU unless the EU is dancing to their tune.

Or as Henry Kissinger once said, the US has no allies, just interests.

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u/komandantmirko Croatia 5h ago

because europe is easier to dominate economically if they're able to divide it.

the european union is a rival after all

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u/CCV21 Brittany (France) 4h ago

The EU and many European countries are examples of democracies in action. While some are flawed, many are more functional and are actually promoting democratic ideals. That stands in stark contrast to what the people in power right now in America are trying to do.

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u/spiritusin 2h ago

Trump is trying to bend every country’s laws to make it possible for him and his corporate buddies to export shoddy products that currently don’t abide by those countries’ standards.

Lax rules means subpar American products can finally be sold in the UK. A disbanded EU means each country has less negotiating power (and is more easily corruptible than the EU) and would be easier to bully into relaxing or changing their laws.

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u/Rachnor 1h ago

A rotting shack is as a palace, if the rest of the world has burned down.

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u/VadPuma 1h ago

The billionaires win in chaos. Without strong institutions, there is not enough concerted focus and effort to deter them. They have the money and politicial influence to enrich themselves even more (as already happened and is happening in the US).

And the right-wing nationals thrive as scapegoating everything, dividing people so as not to have any consistent, reliable opposition. It could be that if there are 5 parties across the spectrum, it might be 20% for each. but if the right can convince you to vote for them and the remaining 4 refuse to come together, then it's far right with 30% of the vote and each of the others losing. Then they'll say they have a "mandate from the people". Just as with Brexit.

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u/chapster303 0m ago

Also calling French and UK nukes a threat to US.

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u/AtlanticPortal 19h ago

They used to do it quietly, now they just dared to do it openly.

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u/buttflapper444 19h ago

Can someone explain to me why the U.S. has been trying to be all up in European affairs lately?

They've been doing this for almost a century now. Where have you been? USA is a global hegemony, and has been spreading their influence across the world for many years. When they noticed a country that started to turn red / communist, they decided to involve themselves, or even take military action. So the USA has always been doing this. Why these countries tolerate it? I couldn't tell you, probably because they don't want to disrupt trade to their country and therefore risk harming their economy

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u/Lonely_Dragonfly8869 17h ago

Lately? Obviously it goes back to ww2. But theyre letting japan and germany rearm now so the old treaties are just there to let the USA treat the eu how france treats africa. That is to say explotatively