Comment by 0xy
7 days ago
It doesn't make sense because you didn't read the original board. It clearly states 'including trade barriers'. You're attacking a strawman.
Countries, including the EU, like to have 'low tariffs' and then have sneaky backdoor taxes or outright bans on US goods through things like milk quotas (Canada), 'biosecurity' (Australia) or EU courts issuing spurious fines on US companies (based on vague laws that only get enforced against US companies, like DMA).
It doesn't make sense because it is not a table of tariffs (including or excluding trade barriers) at all.
It is a table of the current trade deficit against each country as a ratio.
I think you might be granting the administration too much benefit of the doubt. They aren't based on "tariffs + trade barriers", they're just based on trade deficit alone.
https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907559189234196942
https://archive.ph/kRkRh
> milk quotas (Canada)
You mean the milk quota on imports that (a) trump negotiated and (b) the us has never hit?
No, I mean the trade dispute that the Biden admin began. [1]
[1] https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-...
Ah, so a practice that ruled on years ago, and which it turns out still didn't have any significant impact on imports anyway?
Also, remind me, when was the last time that the US actually complied with an unfavourable ruling from the trade panel?
VAT is not a "sneaky backdoor tax", it's imposed on all goods, regardless of where they're produced or imported from.
DMA (and similarly, GDPR) are enforced in EU countries just as much. It's just that the US tends to have more gigantic tech companies that do shady things with user data. Apparently the US doesn't care, but the EU actually does, and so it enforces its laws.
If anything is sneaky, it's the way how the in US you never see salestax until you're about to pay :D
We’re talking many 10s of billions in “fines” specifically levied against US tech firms where there is no EU competitor.
I don’t necessarily disagree with all of the laws themselves (some are incompetent EU risk aversion, some are good protections) but given the massive never ending fines being applied in bad faith and constantly moving goalposts it is indeed a defacto tariff on US tech firms.
The fines are not imposed in bad faith, they're imposed for actual, provable violations of the law. Companies who do not violate the law are not fined. Complaining about fines is another way of saying "We'd like to trade in the EU while violating EU laws that every EU company also has to adhere to."
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DMA is applied equally, you say. How interesting! Can you link me to the examples of the EU going after EU companies for DMA violations? I couldn't find a single one. Not a single case, ever.
The EU wanted to fine Google $35,000,000,000 under DMA. That's a backdoor tax. No European tech company faces this scrutiny. Never have, never will -- because the DMA is a tax on the United States.
It's also interesting that the Google and Meta DMA fines are expected to land in the next week. What a timing coincidence, almost like it's retaliatory (as many articles have suggested).
> Can you link me to the examples of the EU going after EU companies for DMA violations?
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
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Maybe the companies from the EU just didn’t violate the law? How does enforcement prove that it’s a tax?
VAT isn't a trade barrier.
DMA is. GDPR is. Both are applied principally against competitors using arbitrary fines invented by the EU. No compliance guidance is given, because the laws are inherently vague.
It's not. It is not anything specific against for example the US. We have many consumer protection laws. Has nothing to do with the US.
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In that case, VW being fined 17bn for dieselgate should also count as a trade barrier?
That's not just some bs - the other side of the coin is crooked billionaires and other reptilians taking advantage of anything in their way blinded by their massive greed and psycopathic traits.
Excuse me, this is not how a society should roll. Not a sustainable one at least.
Comments like this make me wonder why some Americans think they should be able to move on every other country “like a bitch”.
In some places, dollar is not god. Important, but not god.