Meeting with the one who leads the American boycott in France | EUROtoday

Read too “Europe is now the key”: after the humiliation of Zelensky, Ukrainian society is going throughAnd above all, boycotting just isn’t forbidden. This is the rationale why the group is named “Boycott USA: buy French and European! Because you must not just prohibit buying or consuming such a product. You have to redirect consumption.

When I am in the supermarket, I move my hand of fifty centimeters to go from one American product to another, French.

So that’s it, the key word, “redirect”?

The cursor must be put back to the center. United States-Europe relations have been unbalanced for years. We were too naive to see it and we let go. We have left a commercial, cultural dependence, sometimes even ideological.

I take the example of solutions like Mappy or Viamichelin [versus Google Maps, NDLR] Who do not have exactly the same features because they do not have the same means, because our savings, our funds, left in the United States to finance American solutions which today are used by Trump as means of coercion.

Let us reorient our savings and reorient our consumption towards French and European solutions to give them more weight, and allow companies to hire engineers and high-level teams and prevent them from leaving in the United States.

What you advocate is not a stupid and nasty boycott …

It cannot be “the whole lot or nothing”, because “the whole lot or nothing”, it ends up being “nothing in any respect” and we will be discredited. When I am told that there is an American chip in my iPhone, I know it well: in each product, there is an American atom. It is impossible to do without 100 % American products.

Read too Europe in the vagueness in the face of the unpredictable TrumpCertainly, our savings are nested. But the problem is that they are unbalanced. We must rebalance our consumption and accept American products and services when we have no European solution.

In Denmark, major brands have mean American products from a black label. I regret that, in France, no one has considered it interesting to point out American products.

You, on a daily basis, how did you redirect your consumption?

For the moment, I have focused on digital services because, in my opinion, it is through services that Americans have a power over Europe and that they control our consumption a little, by recovering our data for free.

Concretely, I, on my phone, I have an entire page of only French and European applications. I have a Proton email address which is a Swiss email service. I use Mappy [un service gratuit made in France de cartographie pour me déplacer, NDLR]Reverso, who is the French competitor of Google Translate, or the cat of the French Mistral IA … But I keep certain American applications because today, on Facebook, I still have a lot of friends and there are few alternatives …

Otherwise, when I am in the supermarket, I move my hand of fifty centimeters to go from one American product to another, French.

Read too Customs costs: Trump tells a fantasized story of the United StatesIt’s a bit utopian to want to migrate everything to Europe and you may even get there. But this is the only possible way. But when the Americans choose violent protectionism, we choose intelligent protectionism, that is to say that promotes cooperation between European nations.

On Facebook, your group reaches nearly 30,000 members. Is it a success for you?

30,000 is nothing at all … In any case, it’s not enough. According to an Ifop survey carried out for the NYC.FR. site, 62 % of French people support these boycott calls.

Read too Thierry Breton: “Europe must retaliate! »» I regret that this movement is not followed by large distributors in particular. In Denmark, major brands have mean American products from a black label. I regret that, in France, no one has considered it interesting to point out American products. I also regret that no policy, neither on the right nor on the left, dares to speak of boycott, while it is fundamentally transpartisan.

What boycott initiatives would you like to see the light of day?

We are in the process of writing to all French mass distribution brands in order to find a way to signify the origin of the American products sold there. We also have an application and newsletter project that will help people better consume and boycott. They will see the light of day in the coming weeks. And afterwards, why not demonstrations …

What do you answer to those who quip in coordinating an American boycott via Facebook?

Success is often a sum of compromise, Facebook is one of them. Today, alas, no other platform that Facebook is able to bring together as many people as we do.

But we are gradually migrating our group to two platforms: Mastodon, which is an alternative to X (ex-Twitter), and Pixelfed, which is an alternative to Instagram.

Do you make a distinction between the American companies that support Trump and those who oppose it?

There are not many companies that oppose Donald Trump! I don’t really know it.

Read too And meanwhile, Donald Trump plays (and wins) golfBeyond the boycott of products and services, do you encourage other forms of actions, such as cancellations of travel in the United States?

I think this is good news if tourists choose other destinations than the United States. Especially if it is towards France and Europe. Canada is a magnificent country, why not go?

Read too The Maghreb in shock from Trump taxesWhat message would you like to send to the government of Donald Trump?

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The kangaroo of the day

If Donald Trump and his administration thought that European residents have been going to be achieved, it’s missed. Europe just isn’t a colony of the United States. Europe just isn’t a mine that’s used till the final stone. And it’s time to work on our independence from the United States, to untie progressively and to show to our European neighbors.

The future in Europe is fabricated from alternatives, which we couldn’t see till then. And I believe that Donald Trump offers us the pretty unbelievable alternative to construct one thing in Europe, much more highly effective than earlier than.