Hmmm... besides Coca Cola and some DVDs with American Movies I don't think I got much in my home that has been imported from the U.S. My PCs are from Taiwan, but if I should want a faster CPU, they are manufactured in Germany. Of course there are products in both parts that are not provided on the home market. Antrax medicine, for instance, which the U.S. buys in Germany.
I didn't know that European cars would sell in the U.S. I'm actually surprised by that. Frankly, I anticipated it was something like buying a U.S. car in Europe - very unlikely. I wonder how much of the turnover of European car makes that are made in the USA - I cannot imagine that it is more than 20%.
I know it is easy to find alternatives to European products - isn't that what competition is about? Even the most famous U.S. products, Coca Cola and McDonald's, have competitive products and are easily replaced. If something cannot be replaced, either there is a patent or it is most likely that somebody is in conflict with European law.
One product that Denmark is very good at, is submarine radars. I think we have 80% of the world market. You can probably find it somewhere else, just like you can easily replace Windows.
In fact, the only thing that the USA has, that really is powerful, is the GPS sattelite system. But if you hadn't removed the military jammer, Europe would have a more precise system running now.
And why don't we have that now? Because we trust USA and USA trusts Europe. If we would be fighting each other, USA would not have gone into Afghanistan, and WTC wouldn't have been the last target for Bin Laden.
Your view on Europe very clearly tells me that you only know the English language, maybe some Spanish. Your view is limited to the small part of the world that speaks English. Please remember that the different language regions are very separated from each other in culture, views and news coverage. And you clearly don't have a clue what is happening outside your little cage. There are more than 90 million german speaking people. More than 60 million french speaking people. More than 50 million Italians. More than 60 million polish. More than 20 million dutch, and more than 17 million scandinavians (we can communicate with each other on each our language).
The release of the aid workers in Afghanistan is a very good example. The U.S. media interviewed the U.S. aid workers, and the German media interviewed the German aid workers. And they definitely had very different views on what had happened, which made the news coverage totally different on those two languages. I am very happy that I am not limited to the U.S. news coverage. You should be more humble to cultures you don't understand, and you should trust your government more. They know something you don't. |
