US election: Here’s how it can impact Europeans’ lives
“With these 25 per cent taxes, Donald Trump has created a price differential on our wines, which is considerable, especially in these difficult health conditions,” Aubert Lefas, a winegrower in Pommard, a village in the heart of the vineyards of Burgundy, said.
In one of the three most famous French wine-producing regions, winegrowers believe the outcome of the US presidential election could have a decisive impact on their lives.
The US is the leading export market for Mr. Lefas. But Trump’s tariffs have led to sales to the United States plummeting by a fifth in the last year.
“On a personal note, I will be happy that a democrat is elected because it corresponds more to the French way of life, to the way we work. But I am not at all sure that the simple fact that there is a change of president changes the tax system,” he went on.
Vañó, the Spanish oil producer concurred: “I don’t think it’s Trump’s tariffs, I think it’s US tariffs.”
Whether or not the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, will end the trade war has not been made clear during the election campaign.
An OpenDemocracy investigation found that US Christian right groups, linked to the Trump administration, have spent at least $88 million ( €75 million) to push anti-LGBT and anti-abortion rights in Europe since 2007 with more than a third poured in since 2015.
In October, Poland’s constitutional court ruled that abortions due to birth defects — a majority of all legal terminations — are unconstitutional.
Behind this ruling looms the shadow of one of these ultra-conservative groups, called the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ), which submitted arguments in favour of the new abortion restrictions.
ECLJ is run by Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, and works in close contact with another conservative group, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), designated as a hate group in the US.
“They are lawyers. They train them in fundraising and influencing the political process,” Datta told Euronews.
As Trump is not known for being a particularly devoted man, it is Pence who brings in the votes of the most conservative fringes of the American society.
“It is a very closely-knit network: they do not reflect the opinion of the majority of the population, but they are very effective in getting their views through,” she added.
ECLJ did not answer Euronews’ request for comment.
According to Teodori, Trump’s politics reinforced sympathies towards the “illiberal democracies” of (Russia’s Vladimir) Putin, (Hungary’s Viktor) Orban and Poland; the hostility towards the church of Pope Francis and, more generally, the mistrust against LGBT’s civil rights.”