Todd McClay

I mean, what can they do?

They can raise...

a lower GST.

They can call for tax cuts for the less well-off.

I mean, they're really in a bind.

And the reason they're so concerned is it really does then appeal to the right wing, the far right wing of the political spectrum.

And that's where they're concerned that these economies already weak means that the electorate will go for the far right voters.

Yeah, essentially, the first thing, of course, was COVID.

Everyone said, OK, Europe is strong.

The EU altogether is strong enough to be able to borrow our way out of the debt that has come because of COVID.

And that was something that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, really said, look, we can do it.

But of course, after that came the Ukraine war, and now we've got the energy crunch.

So there's a lot of debt that has to be paid.

And the tax that's coming in is not as much as it used to be.

This is very extraordinary.

German Chancellor Friedrich Netz has always been one of the most pro-American chancellors that Germany have had for several decades.

And all of a sudden, he has clearly become the spokesman for what Europe thinks that the US is up to at the moment.

And an extraordinary outburst for a German chancellor.

Just within the last couple of hours, he said, just as you said, the US quite obviously went into this war without any strategy.

But then he went even further to criticize American diplomacy.