this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Summary

Denmark and the Netherlands criticized Trump’s demand that foreign companies with U.S. government contracts eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Denmark called for a coordinated EU response, labeling the move a potential trade barrier.

The Trump administration sent letters to European firms—including in France and Belgium—warning they must comply with a DEI ban or risk losing U.S. contracts.

European officials condemned the letters, defending DEI as essential to corporate responsibility. The EU Commission is reviewing the situation, while the U.S. State Department called the effort a compliance measure.

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[–] Maxxie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 10 hours ago

Could you imagine 20 years ago that forum troll culture would lead to international obsession with owning the libs.. Brb gonna blow up the world economy cause europe is too gay lmao

[–] rxbudian@lemmy.ca 4 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Use Export Tariff on ASML products and services.
They need ASML for the new factories, so they'll have to buy it anyway. That should make up for the loss of revenue on the other products and services Netherlands lose to the Tariffs and US DEI demands

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Hopefully they have kill switches built into their machines and can turn them off if needed?.

ASML is literally the piviot on which the entire tech world balances.

[–] AnjunaSouls@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

As an American... It would make me so happy if the Netherlands had that capability and used it to stop Trump's BS in it's tracks. We're all so tired of this clown and his antics

[–] asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What a fucking bizarre, pointless demand from a country.

[–] smayonak@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not even the worst ideologically driven madness Pushed on foreign nations. The George W. Bush administration used aid programs to coerce African nations to focus on faith based birth control initiatives (such as abstinence) during the HIV epidemic leading to absolutely massive numbers of infected across the continent.

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, I don't know if I can necessarily rank one of those as being worse that the other. Telling Europe that it needs to deny its own racist legacy of colonialism in order to continue dealing with the U.S. is pretty damn bad. Maybe HIV is a more modern problem, but colonialism killed a lot more Africans.

[–] PeteWheeler@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I can only imagine that EU is just quietly finding ways to not be dependent on the US right now.

What Trump is doing/does is unacceptable. But US citizens have been groomed to accept everything from their perceived leader.

EU has not been groomed to accept these things. They know to just ignore while they can and get ready for a trade war, cold war, or any sort of war.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 points 15 hours ago

The US has been like this since forever, it's just that this time it really went off a cliff.

The US never had been a real democracy, not like countries that don't well, and until it is at the same level, it should just be ignored by the rest of the world

[–] podperson@lemm.ee 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Speak for yourself, but there are a whole lot of us here that don't want anything he's selling. Not all of us have been "groomed to accept everything from their perceived leader." Also a lot of us that are genuinely embarrassed about his actions and their impacts on the rest of the world and want it to stop nowish.

[–] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

About 2/3 of the voting population didn't think he was enough of a threat to vote against him

[–] AnjunaSouls@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

That figure it highly suspect at best. MAGA took actual vote stealing moves this election... Multiple ballot boxes in the area I live (a liberal leaning urban city center) had their contents burnt to dust right after votes had come in, and that's just one of many examples. Not to mention gerrymandering. Don't listen to the propaganda, the man who cried wolf about a stolen election committed the crime he pretended to be the victim of

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 243 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I love that this article expands DEI into diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's important to remember that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not primarily political devices, but a set of moral ideas meant to improve human wellbeing and harmony. DEI is used as a political device by people who are not driven by a desire for human wellbeing.

[–] RidderSport@feddit.org 4 points 18 hours ago

In the case of the EU however as well as a bunch of European countries, DEI is literally part of the constitution. But hey, Dump and his team would need to inform themselves on other countries to know that

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's also useful to ask "if you don't support DEI, is it diversity, equity or inclusion you have an issue with?"

Should certain people or certain kinds of people be excluded? Is that why inclusion is bad?

What's bad about equity? Should things be inequitable? Should certain people get preferential treatment? If so, which people and why?

Or, is it diversity that's the problem? Is uniformness important? Is it so important that it's reasonable to exclude people who don't come from the right backgrounds or don't look a certain way?

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

They're starting to adapt. They often claim,

  • that DEI is an Orwellian term and is not really meaning what it means,
  • that since discrimination is already illegal, such programs are not needed, we just need to "push harder on meritocracy" (which is funny once you realize where the term "meritocracy" comes from),
  • or that these programs have "gone too far", because they watched too much Brian Lunduke or some other people like him, who "overreport" the (supposed) overreaches of DEI programs.

"Overreporting" means that you purposefully overinflate supposed problems by bringing up the same story over and over again, which makes the problems seem way bigger than what they actually are, and at worst the people reading or watching half attended might actually think the problem occured another time. I'm from Hungary, and not only this method made people believe that "Roma crimes" and "disability benefit cheats" were way more widespread than they actually were, ultimately handing over the first landside victory to Fidesz (ironically, many of the sites doing these kinds of tactics claimed Viktor Orbán was both too far-left and Roma - Hungary has its own birther movement that makes critique of Fidesz extremely hard), and making the life harder for those groups much harder once Fidesz enacted its programs. Also thanks to overreporting, some of my relatives thought the knife attacker of Blaha Lujza square made yearly attacks for MP3 players up until MP3 players fell out of fashion in favor of smartphones, with some still warning me against bringing an MP3 player to Budapest, because the far-right "news" site kuruc info likes to post the anniversaries of said tragedies caused by Roma criminals, which was even worse in the very first years after the attack (TL;DR: They brought it up on a yearly basis).

[–] WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Is it bad to be a minority?

[–] nkat2112@sh.itjust.works 88 points 2 days ago (3 children)

That is a very insightful comment and I thank you for sharing it with us all - and it bears repeating:

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are a set of moral ideas meant to improve human well-being and harmony.

Therefore, to be opposed to diversity, equity, and inclusion would imply that one is not driven by a desire for human well-being.

I will remember this. Thank you. (Nice username!)

[–] LwL@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

As much as it sounds good, this is not an argument that will convince anyone who is against DEI (and honestly while DEI usually seems implemented quite well it's not any better of an argument than "North Korea is called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, so they're a democracy").

The people that are against DEI mostly fall in 2 categories. One is flat out racists, which have no issues being against these values. The other are those that believe that the implementation of DEI is in some way bad and discriminatory. This is ime often based on sensationalized news about a few edge cases or stories that were twisted to a degree where they're basically made up. They don't need to be told that diversity, equity and inclusion are good values, they need to be informed about the fearmongering being just that.

Though with what trump is doing I suspect many of the latter category are already realizing that trumps version of "getting rid of DEI" is doing exactly the bad things they were told DEI does, so maybe we're already mostly left with the racists.

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 24 points 2 days ago

Yeah, Trump and Co. are just using the term DEI as their latest bigoted dog whistle term. Here's a Reagan subordinate explaining how they evolve it over time to avoid scrutiny (trigger warnings: repeated use of N* word, YouTube link)

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

They're also just good business sense.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are about making sure that you have a wide variety of perspectives represented within your company.

Here's a really dumb anecdote that illustrates the point; Flaming Hot Cheetos were invented by a Latino janitor. He came up with the recipe, pitched it to higher ups, and through some serious persistence managed to get them to give it a shot. It's sold as one of those feel good stories about coming up from nothing or whatever, but the real takeaway is that it took a god damn janitor with the dogged persistence of a god to make that idea happen, because there was no one in the rooms where the decisions happened who was able to say "Hey, maybe we'd capture the Latino market better if we made flavours that appealed to them?" A more diverse company would already have been having these kinds of ideas. How much brilliance is being lost because of bad hiring practices?

Diversity makes your business more effective. A diverse workplace can attract and keep the best talent. A diverse workplace can serve the broadest range of customers, and penetrate deeper into every market it targets. A diverse workplace can build a more healthy environment for all its employees, creating better productivity. These are all good things if you are a company that likes making money.

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[–] virku@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

TIL Equity isn't always regarding to money. I thought the E in DEI stood for equality until now.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] huppakee@lemm.ee 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nice thanks.

If you want you can add it to a post with ![alt text](img-url) like this:

equality vs equity

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 53 points 2 days ago (4 children)

The obligatory follow up image

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[–] NABDad@lemmy.world 133 points 2 days ago (4 children)

As a US citizen, I really wish the official reaction was just:

Fuck off.

[–] lauha@lemmy.one 74 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I wish EU's response was, that all US conpanies dealing with any government business in EU must comply to EU DEI rules

[–] fuzzy_feeling@programming.dev 19 points 1 day ago (3 children)

what about supply chain regulations? i've heard child labor is legal in the us now.

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[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

or even "we regret your cultural requirements will prevent many business opportunities and hope you can find suitable replacement goods and services. We thank you for decades of mutually-beneficial trade and look forward to opportunities in the future." ?

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[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 133 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Eat shit trumpo.

That's all. That's the only answer we should be giving the orange cunt. We need to consider the US an enemy country until things change, because that's how they are treating us.

[–] octopus_ink@slrpnk.net 68 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No argument from this US Citizen.

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 51 points 2 days ago (6 children)

As a US citizen, I consider the current administration an enemy, too.

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[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 75 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

The message is: don't do business with the USA. Find other, more reliable trading partners. It may be a loss in the short term, but bowing to fascist imperialism and white supremacist ideology will be a much bigger loss overall.

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[–] Kuma@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Every time I read news about Trump I always wonder what his end goal is. Because he sounds so much like those end users who says unreasonable things like "you need to add/fix/change this" if it is done then they always comes back for more because they didn't get the end come they wanted and then it all turns out they wanted something that was reasonable (or not) but they demand changes that won't do that.

Is his end goal really getting more jobs?

And I wonder what kind of jobs he wish to create because a lot of Americans seem to have many weird jobs already like just standing in a corner pointing in a direction or taking care of your filled form by walking 3 meters to another person with it.

He doesn't have a goal, he acts purely on emotion. He's an overgrown child throwing a decades-long temper tantrum.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

His end goal is to become a dictator like Putin and turn us into serfs for the oligarchs while destroying the economy so his friends can buy everything up. Alternatively, he’s just doing whatever his pals tell him to do while he pisses away tax payer money in Florida.

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Every time I read news about Trump I always wonder what his end goal is.

I interpret it as some combination of staying out of prison, getting richer, serving the demands of those who have blackmail on him and self aggrandization.

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[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago

His end goal is to increase his wealth, status, and power as well as punishing those who dare to disagree or make him feel smaller.

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[–] i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk 47 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure that eliminating DEI is against EU law, so I'm not sure how they are supposed to conform (and, of course, they shouldn't). Maybe sue the US government for breach of contract and move on.

Suing won't have any effect as the US can simply refuse to follow the rules. There is a simpler way: don't do business with them. Let them find the hard way that the world can and will go on without them but they can't go on without the world.

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[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

Going to make these companies beat up gay people too?

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 27 points 2 days ago (3 children)

So now he thinks he can make demands extraterritoriality, awesome. I don't suppose he would make demands like 'stop invading and murdering you neighbor countries and their people' now would he? Nah, let's drop sanctions from Russia and who is this Israel place that he was meant to stop from doing bad things, I haven't heard much on them of late....

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

He can demand the world from Denmark and France, yet he can't demand anything about the guy his admin wrongly deported to El Salvador?

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[–] Tempus_Fugit@midwest.social 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

If you give this orange shit stain an inch, he'll take a mile! Best to remember that.

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