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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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

What a fucking bizarre, pointless demand from a country.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 13 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 121 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

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

Fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 20 hours 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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours 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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[–] [email protected] 15 points 15 hours ago

Going to make these companies beat up gay people too?

[–] [email protected] 219 points 22 hours ago (3 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 77 points 22 hours 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!)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

I love this example because flaming hot Cheetos are super popular outside the Latino market, too. I bet there's not a middle school in the country where kids don't love them.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 20 hours 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)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 22 points 22 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 34 points 21 hours 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

[–] [email protected] 48 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

The obligatory follow up image

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Or, replace the chain link fence with a dodgy internet stream of the game. It's unjust that some people don't get to see the game, and other people who paid for a ticket do.

(only partially joking)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 18 hours ago
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Think of it like, "equality of opportunity" vs "equality of outcome." With equity being closer to the latter.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 17 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

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

Be adulated. Get a nobel peace price because Obama has one (for not inexplicable but inexcusable reasons)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 16 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 15 hours ago (2 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago

Every move he makes, every word he speaks falls under one of those items. Spot on!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

So a desperat attempt to survive the shit he is in, while still being the hot topic by create emotional engagement? Sounds more like an influencer or a cult leader...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

Cult leader is accurate.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Nah. What he wants is bossing others around and taking revenge on people and things that bothered him, or going after things he thinks give him an advantage. That's usually by bullying people until they give up and do what he wants. His voters like DEI? Bully and force things until it's stamped out. Justice convicted him, so break justice. Consequences for jobs and the economy, or even the law, don't matter to him.

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[–] [email protected] 127 points 23 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

No argument from this US Citizen.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 22 hours ago (6 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours 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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[–] [email protected] 47 points 23 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 22 hours ago

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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[–] [email protected] 7 points 17 hours ago

I wonder what he'll say when he realises what the French motto means. What a muppet.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 22 hours 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....

[–] [email protected] 21 points 22 hours 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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[–] [email protected] 24 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 22 hours ago

appeasement doesn't work

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