Don’t buy American goods

Some tech alternatives:

Email: Protonmail is really good. They’re a Swiss company with an emphasis on privacy (it’s kind of their USP). It’s also owned by a non-profit.

Search engines: Bing, Quant

Microsoft Office: Libre Office (although if you buy a laptop with MO already installed, you’ve already paid for it)

I obviously mean for companies and governments to push through with the technology. EVs are too heavy for our infraestructure, for starters.

Excuse me, but I don't think she was calling voters fascists because she disagreed with them.

I think she was calling them fascists because they voted for a candidate with an open fondness for fascism.

You'd be surprised at how many Americans DON'T know what's going on. After all, there were 70,000,000 voters who chose him.

For starters, I stopped using Google years ago.

And you could certainly think about not using Google or FB to log in to anything else. And you could think about trying an email provider not based in the U.S.

And it's certainly not a problem to avoid Amazon. They're only a middleman and you can buy most products elsewhere. Especially in person, if you live in a good-sized city.

For the record, I'm okay not using any of them.

Hey, speaking as an American - I agree!

@MushMonster You cannot buy a hydrogen car. The mandate is to replace petrol/diesel with electric by 3035 in terms of new cars sold. 2025 it's to be 28%. Most of these are not to private buyers. What is a car driver supposed to do? Wait for the technology you want? The main thing is avoid Tesla. That's really easy. Tesla sales are declining here as more options are on the market. I'm not keen on a headlong rush to buy Chinese cheep as chips cars either by the way.

@GooseberryBeret I take your point but I don't think it IS a real effort to switch many things. Not choosing Heinz, for example. Avoiding Kraft foods etc. Not shopping on Amazon is actually pretty easy (although perhaps takes a couple of minutes more, when you're in the habit of it, it is much easier). Like any habit they are a little more difficult at first then become second nature.

Yes it should be done in tandem with other measures you suggest, but a small amount of research can mean easy choices that take no time. Your suggestion that it needs to be time intensive I think is in many cases untrue.

And you don't need to be perfect at all times.

Personally I think it sounds like a massive amount of effort for a minuscule amount of impact - Trump is tanking the US economy without our help.

I mean trying to boycott US goods in general, not boycotting Tesla which has a much more direct impact on one of the worst people responsible.

I’d rather use the limited time and energy that I devote to consumer choices to avoiding companies and products which are directly harming the environment or exploiting workers. And within that you have to pick what seems most worthwhile. I don’t fly but I haven’t made any effort to reduce plastic; I buy almost all my new clothes on Vinted to avoid contributing to the harms of fast fashion, but I only have a half-arsed boycott of Amazon and will buy on there if the product is a lot cheaper or seems better than what I can get elsewhere. I like to buy Fairtrade but don’t always… etc. etc.

So I think you can’t make perfect consumer choices. If there are easy switches people want to make away from US goods, fine. But putting too much effort into it is probably a waste of time, when there are other things you could be focusing on which have more of an impact.

On the EVs, we should really have a sit down and reconsider moment. The metals needed, the weight, the amoint of energy needed.
Hydrogen powered ( hydrogen fuel cell technology), in my opinion, is far superior to electric vehicles. We are already using platinum in car catalytic converters and it is being recycled. We may not need massive extra amounts of mining to cover demand. They are much lighter.
The change into hydrogen power for vehicles and to store solar, wind and wave power is something I would really like to see happening. And in UK, particularly, the use of wave power, we have such a large ratio of coast to cities.
These are my favourites.

It makes full sense, not sure why some people are getting spiky about it.
Europe needs to defend itself now, and that is what Trumps wants, by the way.

So, we need the money, so keep our GDP within Europe. We also need further security away from US- make our own IT, Silicone Valley version, social media companies- it keeps the money in and makes us safer. Maybe we can avoid Russia meddling with our systems that way. Let some IT genius build us an online version of the enigma machine, Europe made for Europe, only.
That will bring this economic growth we need- manufacture our own goods, inuding a lot of software and weapons. Novel ideas.
It is a perfectly sound and reasonable way forward from this.

Agree, there are a lot of better EV's . People liked tesla due to their charging network as they were one of the first EVs and got this infrastructure correct. I am sure other s have caught up with this now.

Also we live in the country and are not 1/2 a mile from anything we need! No buses. Most people with a ev are not going very far in them. Lots are second cars. Would not use ours for long journeys. Used ones (ours was 8 months old) are a bargain. List price £68,000 - purchase price £46,000. I'm very happy with it. I've never owned a car that did 50 mpg.

This website is hosted by a US company, AWS. You should probably leave. 😬

@dubsie Well some people like them! We have several cars and one is a EV. Does well over 200 miles. We just use it locally though and charge at home. We have solar panels and batteries. This makes running costs cheap. I think setup matters. All I'm saying is that the government has ev targets and don't buy Teslas!

Who says so?

I recall reams and reams of threads about boycotts of Isreali goods, some people as in this thread in fact are still wanting to boycott Israeli goods and no one questions that or gets snippy

People will vote with their money and its good to share ideas about how that can take place, particularly in a climate where lots of our companies have been taken over by massive coorporations who are US based.

A post above queries 'what about Boots' - well what about Boots, other chemists are available, other supermarkets are available, other items are available.

Boycotts can never been 100% as people have set out but if you believe it in as I do for the US, its about being more mindful of what you're purchasing and where your money is going

Seeing a simplistic view of a global economy?

Why buy an electric car, I owned one and I got totally fed up with poor range in the winter. Spent my life sitting on charging points..

I've gone back to petrol, 1.8 with 150 bhp and does 50 mpg on the motorway....I love it.

I'm all for reducing pollution but I think if people though more about the journeys they make....ie do you need the car to drive half a mile down the road to drops the kids off, we wouldn't be talking about electric

Amazing how snippy and sneering people are being about a potential boycott of US goods, whats that about?

Not buying from Amazon can harm authors on low pay (average earnings £7k in the UK) and other small businesses who use it for distribution.

Meanwhile, 70% of Amazon’s operating profit comes from its web services.

As used by AstaZenecca, the BBC, some parts of the NHS.

Going to boycott them, too?

I am onboard. I will avoid buying products from them as far as possible.
And hoping for European companies to appear in the IT business, so will swap to them.

Don’t forget to boycott Boots and other ex British companies owner by Americans.
Or don’t your ‘principles’ extend that far?

You can buy from them directly…

I must said that is a hell of an amount of alcohol for the population in Ontario?

Oh amazing. I will start seeing places in Florida to buy to get a bargain or two. I wonder why they did not go to the Caribbean to begin with? Are we talking Aruba or Barbados?