Comment by ffsm8
6 hours ago
You're splitting hairs in this case, while that's unquestionably true, it's irrelevant if there tariffs are only set on one party.
That's why Trump's tariffs on everything was so ... Uh ... "Interesting". If only one party gets the tariffs, you end up with other parties selling the goods instead, which does cause meaningful damage to the tariffed party
Or the tariffing party just continues buying very nearly the same amount of things at higher prices in many categories because those items don’t have perfectly elastic supply and demand.
Technically true but highly misleading. The amount of good like that are few, less then 30% of the EU -> US trade.
That’s actually kind of like not a good statistic though.
For 30% of transactions with the EU it’s just the US shooting itself in the foot and passing on higher costs to average Americans.
Imagine enacting a tax where 30% of the money collected was a net negative. I can’t think of many taxes that are that poorly constructed.
For the 70% of transactions where US companies and individuals decide to buy less or use alternative sources, doesn’t that at some point harm US businesses? At the very least you’re now artificially lowering competition, which tends to drive overall prices up and quality down.