Comment by hermanzegerman
12 hours ago
Where is EU protectionist?
I feel we are way less protectionist than most other Economic Regions. Including the USA, which are very protectionist but always claim otherwise
12 hours ago
Where is EU protectionist?
I feel we are way less protectionist than most other Economic Regions. Including the USA, which are very protectionist but always claim otherwise
Well different discussion, but look at the Mercosur agreement and all the opposition from farmers in the EU. They are extremely protectionist when it comes to agriculture, at least.
Yes the farmers are a very vocal and powerful minority.
They get more than 50% of their income from subsidies, are quite well off, but always find a reason to complain.
I was thinking more about stuff like "Buy American"-Regulations for public tenders. Stuff like that doesn't exist here
Well I can certainly understand them. Based on price tgey would not be able to compete and have half decent living wages so protectionism AND subsidies is a decent strategy to maintain local production which I feel allow a country / area to not lose a lever in international negociations.
Well, if every big company gets a giant EU fine for, say, preinstalling a web browser in an OS, except for EU companies, that could make it easier for the EU companies.
Every company would get fined for anticompetitive behaviour, regardless of where are based.
Well yes, but because there are approximately zero EU tech companies that can be affected by these fines and regulations there is very little political pushback against them.
In a certain sense it’s a way for EU to clawback at least a small slice of all that money flowing to the US.
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Apparently you aren't aware of the EU's deep regulatory protectionism and subsidies at both EU and country level. A small portion is legitimately about protecting consumers, but ultimately this stuff is all designed by and for EU industry.
Basically all economic regions get highly protectionist when it comes to key areas like agriculture, banking, steel production, energy, automotive manufacturing, etc.
On tariffs, the US is now higher, but tariffs are a tax that passes through overwhelmingly onto the consumer (by like 95%+). Given there's essentially no fully domestic US manufacturing supply chains and the US imports everything, it's a defacto VAT from the perspective of the consumer. The EU has VAT levels that are still much higher than the average US tariff level, which is a essentially a dampener on consumption.
But the VAT applies to all goods regardless where they are produced. So that's not a protectionist measure