Now that the US sees the EU as a potential enemy, Europe has moved to ensure its financial system can never be sanctioned or shut down; something the US has done to Russia, Cuba, and Iran.
By late 2025,efforts centered on the Digital Euro,a nonprofit payment system run by the EuropeanCentral Bank (like euro cash). Due by 2030, it would offer lower fees and quickly replace much Visa and Mastercard usage.
While still in development,other solutions arrived sooner. Instant bank-to-bank payments, bypassing cards, are expanding rapidly.
In February, 130 million users across 13 national systems were linked in a Europe-wide networkbaiming to cover all of Europe. Fees are a fraction of Visa/Mastercard, though unlike the Digital Euro, it’s not yet available as a debit card; only online and on phones.
The EU also wants to decouple from US software and is preparing its own alternative to Microsoft Office.
It would have been nice in a way to have a country that deserves as much trust as the US was given for so long. But we never deserved it and trump has obliterated any hope that we ever will deserve that trust ever again. We should expect someone worse than trump. The US has been riddled with corruption and self inflicted social problems and what we’ve seen come fully into the open about that is most people are fine with all of it. People don’t want a better tomorrow for anyone else. They’re prioritized keeping others down; they’ll figure out later how to lift themselves up.