« Is America great yet? Nope, and it id not headed in the right direction ! » As the US continues to drift away from values that were compatible with Europeans’, it is important to diversify where we purchase from.

BABA stands for « Buy Anything But American », it is an effort to revisit my purchasing behavior.

So far, the only permanent country on my list of countries « not to buy from » was Russia, to prevent from fueling the war with Ukraine, directly and indirectly.

China has a hop-on hop-off position in my list. I believe there are a few great Chinese products that get lost in the myriads of items made bad and cheap. But I do not carry these products and China is only a cheaper alternative to all products. My position is that for anything I can afford, I avoid the transportation from China and I choose Europe.

Help me list all interesting actions

For American products, it is more intertwined and more difficult to separate.

Coke and McDo are prepared in France, my phone was designed in California, my mail is Google and my company is on Azure.

Let me list the moves I believe I can do. I need you to propose other ideas !

Some other ideas can come from that story of European judges losing access to US-based services. See here : https://www.heise.de/en/news/How-a-French-judge-was-digitally-cut-off-by-the-USA-11087561.html. What does not work for him any more is a good basis to exclude from my life or to search for European alternatives and be proud of who I give money to.

Ideas for personal life

So, first ideas, from simple to more complex:

• Cancel Amazon Prime (done),
• Cancel Netflix,
• Stop all shopping at Amazon (use local store instead) (done),
• Find alternatives for all Google, Meta, Tiktok (US-bought), Instagram, etc.
• Refrain from buying American brands for clothing, like Nike (done, buy Decathlon or buy Adidas)
• Stop buying Tesla (already done),
• Stop using VISA and Mastercard (learn to request CB instead in France)
• Stop paying through Revolut (until they partner with CB),
• Stop buying Apple phones,
• Move away from Microsoft Windows on my laptop,

Ideas for professional life

• Stop buying F35 (easy as not my business),
• Find European alternatives to AWS, Azure and GCP (tough one as I love Databricks that, though mostly open-source, only runs on these),
• Promote open-source over commercial US licenses,