• huppakee@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    China’s strategy worked great, just counter any announced tarrif with an equal reciprocal tarrif and he’ll back off eventually. I wonder if we have more or less to loose than China had.

      • huppakee@lemm.ee
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        23 hours ago

        Totally, don’t want our governments to be pushed over. Just saying I have no clue how we compare to China in this.

    • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
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      24 hours ago

      Don’t worry, he’ll back down either way. He’ll just claim that he’s made a great deal with EU even if no such deal has been made, and then lower the tariffs again.

      • albert180@piefed.social
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        23 hours ago

        In our national news they’ve said that the EU made offers and the Trump Team didn’t even responded to them, and they have the impression that they are severely understaffed and through the flowers indirectly said not very competent

    • TWeaK@feddit.uk
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      21 hours ago

      No, blind retaliatory tariffs would be stupid. When someone is punching themselves in the face, the correct thing to do is not to also punch yourself in the face.

      Tariffs have 3 effects:

      • The buyer pays more.
      • Because the buyer pays more, the seller makes fewer sales.
      • The government collects tariff tax revenue.

      Whichever way the tariff goes, export or import, it will negatively affect that nation’s people. An import tariff, like this, would negatively affect local consumers. An export tariff (eg Canada tariffing electricity exports to the US) would negatively affect local businesses through lost sales (the genius with Canada is the US can’t stop buying electricity, so sales local sales would stay the same).

      The only way a tariff makes sense for a country is if the tariff tax revenue is reinvested into the local economy. For example, if you tariff imports, you should use that revenue to incentivise local businesses to grow to replace that import.

      Trump is not doing that. He’s just collecting tax money from American people. He’s almost certainly going to spaff that away on some scam, probably crypto, and basically bankrupt the American taxpayer and fuck up everyone’s livelihoods.

      EU countries should not copy Trump and blanket tax their citizens for American imports. If the EU were to implement tariffs (and I argue this isn’t necessary or worthwhile), they should only be done with a plan to reinvest, such that there is a net benefit. Blunt tariffs with no plan will almost certainly have a net negative effect.

      China is like Trump, in that neither of them care much about the negative effects on their people. That’s why China went hard with retaliatory tariffs. The EU does not need to emulate that behaviour.

    • albert180@piefed.social
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      23 hours ago

      They’re also throwing out the Windows Garbage out of government and critical systems and switching to Linux, and want to audit the sources for the remaining systems