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Comment by hnburnsy

8 days ago

Current EU tariffs on US goods...

  Product Category              Tariff Rate
  ----------------------------- --------------
  Dairy Products (e.g., cheese, butter)             Up to 50%
  Processed Foods (e.g., chocolate, confectionery)  30-40%
  Alcoholic Beverages (e.g., whiskey, bourbon)      25%
  Steel and Aluminum Products                       25%
  Automobiles                                       10%
  Industrial Goods                                  5-10%

26 comments

hnburnsy

Reply
District5524  8 days ago

That's a bit misleading. Make no mistake, current US tariffs are UNIVERSAL. Not specific to e.g. chicken or automobiles or purebred horses. They cover absolutely everything. While you may see 38% or more tariff on chocolate, chocolate export to the EU from the US is hardly an important issue. And for dairy products, the tariff is a fixed euro amount per weight, not %.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...

https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/search?origi...

nottorp  8 days ago

I wasn't touching the first two categories anyway, tariffs or no tariffs.

First one because I don't understand why i should risk a milk based product that has traveled for months across an ocean. Or even from another EU country, when I can buy stuff made in a 200 km radius around me.

Second one because afaik it's legal to call "chocolate" something that does not contain any actual cocoa in the US.

  • technothrasher  7 days ago

    > Second one because afaik it's legal to call "chocolate" something that does not contain any actual cocoa in the US.

    Well, no. It cannot be called "chocolate" if it is something that consumers would expect to be made from actual chocolate. However, it can contain the term "chocolate" if cocoa or another cacao product is the sole source of its chocolate flavor, and as long as consumers have a pre-established understanding that it is likely to not be made from chocolate. For example, people generally understand that chocolate cake is likely made with cocoa, not chocolate, and so it can be labeled "chocolate cake". If there is no such general understanding, the product must be labeled "chocolate flavored".

    (See the US FDA CPG Sec 515.800, "Labeling of Products Purporting to be 'Chocolate' or 'Chocolate Flavored'")

    Now if we could just get them to stop calling chocolate products with dairy in them "dark" (I'm looking at you, Hershey...)

  • SJC_Hacker  7 days ago

    Cheese is the obvious one here. I can get a variety of foreign cheeses even at my local big-box grocery. Much better options than most domestically produced cheese.

    Irish/Finnish butter (Kerrygold/Finlandia) is also fairly popular here.

    If properly refrigerated, milk can last for months especially if pasteurized.

    You can also evaporate milk and it will last nearly forever unrefrigerated if kept dry

    • nottorp  7 days ago

      > If properly refrigerated, milk can last for months especially if pasteurized.

      But why take the risk when you can have fresh?

      > You can also evaporate milk and it will last nearly forever unrefrigerated if kept dry

      Is that still milk?

      Cheeses yes, I randomly buy fancy cheeses. But most of my purchases are still boring predictable recent local cheese.

      2 replies →

AnAfrican  7 days ago

Careful: The rate mentioned for alcoholic beverages (and confectionery) may include Excise Duty. Excise Duty usually have the non-discriminatory aspect of VAT : they’re also applied on local production.

dralley  8 days ago

Trump thinks VAT is comparable to a tariff. VATs are not directly comparable to tariffs.

piokoch  7 days ago

Interesting that people are downvoting heavily those information. If reality does not match our view of the World, well, let's ignore reality. The truth is that EU kept higher tariffs on US goods than the other way, Trump is changing that and there is an outcry, because it was Trump who did that. If that was Kamala, nobody would even notice.