The European Union is working on countermeasures in response to the tariffs that US president Trump has announced. Commission president Ursula von der
  • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    The US can fucking burn for all I care but, I do feel like implementing tariffs on US products should be carefully considered.

    Trumps economic policy is going to ruin the US economy and the quality of life for Americans. There’s no doubt about that.

    The thing is, if you implement tariffs against the US then he can blame nasty Europe and mean China for what they’re doing to the US.

    Alternatively, if you just let Americans pay the tariffs I think Trump will run out of steam pretty quick. How long can Americans stand to pay an extra 50% on all the junk they buy from China?

    Not very long I’m betting.

    • airglow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      5 months ago

      Placing tariffs on US Big Tech services would accelerate the adoption and development of free and open source software, which benefits not only Europeans, but also people in the US and the rest of the world.

    • drainage88878@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      Now that I’ve read the article, I guess the EU could try to get consumers to pay the EU customs to use Facebook for example. Not sure how that would work on a technical level. It would be easy for a consumer to bypass the EU paywall around Facebook.

    • stephan262@lemmy.world
      6·
      5 months ago

      VAT is only a tax on foreign goods insofar as it is a tax on ALL goods irrespective of origin. So it’s not hypocritical as it is a very different thing.

        • bokster@lemmy.sdf.org
          41·
          5 months ago

          Most of the world - other than a few places (US included) - switched to VAT ages ago. It’s a more efficient system. It’s not the same as “sales tax”. It’s literary a “value added tax” and every purchase and sale includes it - even for materials and half products.

          The idea here is that you pay a tax on the amount of value you add in the chain. VAT is an indirect tax, because the consumer who ultimately bears the burden of the tax is not the entity that pays it.

          It’s also much more transparent, as it must be included in the quoted price. Not like the US, where you see an item on the self for $5.00 and then the total at the register is $9.54 because it now has sales, city, state, and federal tax.

          Check the Wikipedia article as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax

            • bokster@lemmy.sdf.org
              3·
              5 months ago

              I balled at 9% sales tax… Yours is amplified 20%, times 5… It’s just a name.

              This shows deep misunderstanding in what VAT is and how it works. It’s not “a flat out 20% sales tax with a different name”. The concept is different. But I do not have neither time or energy to argue on the internet.

              And why ever day “we switched to VAT”

              Because we used to have sales tax.

              You’re probably a bot anyway.

              Gee. Thanks?

            • Zabjam@lemm.ee
              1·
              5 months ago

              That’s not how VAT works. As a business you pay VAT as an input tax. You can deduct that from your VAT liability at point of sale. The business is liable to pay VAT on the sale to the end consumer but can (and does) recharge it to the customer. Not a tax expert at all, so I might be off a bit - but I am sure that you don’t pay full VAT on every R&D, production, sale step along the process.