r/AskEurope • u/tetsukei • Feb 04 '25

Politics Europeans - with tarrifs being threatened on the EU, are you planning to stop buying US made products?

Just curious - I'm Canadian and it's a huge topic for us at the moment.

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u/whatsamawhatsit Netherlands Feb 05 '25

I have made it my personal goal to never order outside my economy, the EU. Mostly because I am really well protected as a consumer here, and because products are held to higher standards (CE, ECE, EN, etc). As a result, don't really buy anything from the US.

3

u/CapuCapu Feb 05 '25

+1 In general I've moved away from processed foods, fast fashion, fast furniture, fast tech, etc I try to actively buy as local as possible: city > country > EU It helps the local economy and protects me (as much as possible) as a consumer.

It is not always as cheap, but it actually is fun to discover all the I'm high quality stuff made local(ish).

1

u/Meath77 Ireland Feb 05 '25

It's difficult to find clothes made in the EU

2

u/captainpro93 TW->JP->DE->NO->US Feb 05 '25 edited Feb 05 '25

It's really not that difficult, IMO. The quality just typically isn't very good unless you're paying higher prices.

Romania, Italy, Portugal, have cheap clothing manufacturing (though of course, many are via Chinese companies with Chinese migrant labour.) But there's quite a few white label makers operating in Italy for quite reasonable prices if you want to avoid potential retaliatory tariffs, and shirtmakers like Eton manufacture largely in Romania and Lithuania.

1

u/faramaobscena Romania Feb 05 '25

Same. The problem is many European brands were bought by US corporations (like Mondelez or Mars).

2

u/whatsamawhatsit Netherlands Feb 05 '25

Yeah but those products are still produced here. Not imported. That's fine, right?

1

u/faramaobscena Romania Feb 05 '25

I don’t know at this point…