Summary
Donald Trump has announced plans to impose 25% tariffs on the European Union, claiming the bloc was “formed to screw the United States.”
While details are pending, he suggested the levies would target cars and other imports. The EU, a major U.S. trading partner, has vowed immediate retaliation, with potential tariffs impacting $29.3 billion in exports.
French President Emmanuel Macron had attempted to dissuade Trump, urging focus on China instead.
Critics, including economists and conservative media, warn the tariffs could harm the U.S. economy.
I’m in the EU and I very much I hope he does, beause the response will be spectacular: apparently there is an Act from 2023 that the EU can respond to this by suspending intellectual property rights of US companies, plus from last time Trump was President the EU learned to target counter-Tariffs for maximum political effect (basically hitting Republican states hardest) and that will also work fine in targetting US companies politically affiliated with Trump (bye, bye, Tesla!).
Also it will definitelly finish off any lingering delusions of European politicians that the US is an “ally”.
Yeah howerver for that you’d need Brussels to find its balls and actually start acting like it had a spine.
And of course, find a consensus among all the contradictory interest of the different EU states (including a good chunk aligned on trump’s illiberal approach if not Russian controlled).
Man I REALLY hope you’re right, but I don’t have my hopes up. On another hand if it’s not now, it’ll never happen.
That would be great if another way to retaliate against US tariffs would be other countries officially hosting pirated US material for anyone to download. Make it extra easy for everyone to boycott American companies!
I mean, we have retaliatory tariffs ready to go too, and I’m not sure they’d be any less damaging.
If we went nuclear shutting off power to New York and water to Seattle and Boise is a thing we could do.
They backed off twice already. Its a joke at this point.
Twice? Are you thinking of the first term thing?
The last time, it really looked like he panicked when the Dow (predictably, to everyone else) fell. If he blinks every time, yeah, it’s never going to actually happen, although I can’t see him deciding that actually he’s wrong about tariffs being awesome.
He pushed it by a month again. Now its for sure actually defenitely gonna happen in April Im serious guys no really.
Uhh, this CBC story is from a couple hours ago: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-tariff-march-4-1.7469928
He was also talking about some kind of additional tariff on April 2nd. On the auto industry (that will be shut down if he follows through anyway), IIRC. That being said, as CBC noted elsewhere he himself is bad at keeping his threats straight.
Huh. There were some CBC articles floating around saying they were postponed again. I guess not? The articles are gone.
I feel like nobody knows wtf is going on.
After I sent this, I saw a clip about it. It looks like he did suggest it was all on April 2 in some interview. If he had it wrong, was deliberately being confusing or what is unclear, but it hardly matters.
We’ll see what happens then, basically. Either way, we should be getting the hell away from American dependence.
I feel like nobody knows wtf is going on.
That’s exactly what they want.
Do it. I know some people in New York who could use a reality check.
And hopefully Trump would care? Last time we blacked them out (by accident) all hell broke loose in just a day, but they don’t vote Republican.
Come to think of it, we could also cut off land access to Alaska. We’re going to wait for him to escalate this first, though.
Water to Seattle? Is this legit because Seattle has no shortage of precipitation or water AFAIK.
Assuming their supply is related to the Colombia river system, yes. It looked like all of Washington was in the watershed in the map I saw.
How badly impacted they’d be by us messing with the upstream supply, I can’t say.
The Columbia flows through Eastern Washington, it’s on the other side of a mountain range from Seattle. That’s like threatening to cause an avalanche at Banff to hurt Vancouver.
In either case it’s the environment that would bear the brunt of the conflict. If you want to hurt Seattle you could just raise our electric bill.
Ah, my bad. So many mountain ranges makes it hard to keep track of what flows where. I’m a little unclear on the bits I’ve been through many times, even.
Well, IIRC the rest of Washington is a militia-ridden red state, so maybe that’s even better. (Or am I thinking of Oregon?)
Both actually, as depressing as that is. The entire region started as the Oregon Territory just before the civil war, and ever since the beginning has had to grapple with far right nutjobs.
Over time the coastal west of each state became more and more blue and populous, while the east stayed rural and backwards.
Things are slowly changing though, Spokane county has voted blue for the past decade.
Good to know!
The bat needs to bounce back and also hit the fascist ball in the face. Making things worse for everybody for no reason!
Oui oui le tariff oui
yeah american tourists are going to have a hard time in the next 50 years.
Studies show the majority of Americans don’t have a passport let alone have left their own state. 3rd world country.
That’s unfortunately what happens when people get gaslit into thinking being a debt slave is morally righteous.
DO IT! COMON! DO IT! Make every european leader more alligned with the EU and push us more and more together and more indipendent again!
DO IT! SCARDY CAT
The EU was setup to help protect Europe and enable them to have better control over overly enthusiastic capitalist companies such as those found in the US.
But what do we expect from a low intelligence puppet of Russia?
Wtf kinda drug are the elite in the US on?
Cocaine, I remember hearing about Elon Musk’s supplier a while back. Most of the Republican Party is cranked, too, according to a historically young GOP congressman Madison Cawthorn.
Russian psy-ops boosted by algos from coked up tech bros.
Ketamine, or so I heard.
Capitalism.
Side effects include electing a complete moron and his piss baby groupies to the presidency
We need a dictator then?
Y’all elected one.
Money and power the name of that drog
Special K if Elon is any indication
Money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP2EKTCngiM Being rich is a mental disease. You don’t think straight when you are rich. The best solution is to not let people bi rich, ever.
Fucking do it then, cunt!
The EU has an official mechanism to combat economic pressure like this that includes suspension of all intellectual property from the country imposing the tarrifs.
Capitalism-lover hates competition. Interesting.
Capitalism strives to make money. Competition means profit margins shrink. So yes capitalists are against competition.
That is one of the many reasons listening to companies is not good economic planning for countries.
Yes, because the initial tarriff talks went over so well…
It did for Mexico and Canada.
They agreed to nothing new, and the terrifs vanished.
It must be like trying to negotiate with a toddler.
Putin’s puppet
Would love to be in the guy’s head for just 5 minutes, to see if he’s high or crazy or what.
see if he’s high or crazy or what
Either compromised, or bought and paid for, is what he is.
High and crazy, but mostly
I literally made that meme about 15 years ago, and I always feel proud when it unexpectedly pops up
Other feasible options, yes!
Multiple different personality disorders combined with just being an asshole, I’m thinking.
Multiple would make sense, but seems like just one personality🤪👀
Multiple disorders, not personalities.
Hmm, yes, maybe. Antisocial, avoidant/hyper sensitive to criticism, dependency disorder/on musk, histrionic/attention seeking, obsessive compulsive, narcissistic. Crap, he’s got 'em all.
Don’t forget sociopathic!
Wake me when that pussy manages to even speak in his own cabinet meetings without elon interrupting.
Do it. See what happens to that beautiful country of yours. What do you even provide the world besides shitty tech like meta and microsoft?
I believe Europe is importing quite some LNG, since we are weaning off Russia’s gas teat
Canada has quite a lot we can ship to Europe if you don’t want American LNG.
And suddenly Norway (not part of the EU or custom union) was exempt since I think energy and gas is what we live off these days.
I wonder how viable it would be to crack Canadian bitumen to produce methane for Europe
Guns and superhero movies mostly.
Based on an overwhelming amount of economic studies of tariffs in the last 100 years, the EU should ignore it. Why enact tariffs on American goods and make life more expensive for Europeans? Studies show EU businesses will raise prices accordingly. The citizens will be worse off.
However, based on our knowledge of how politicians act, they’ll take the bait and retaliate, thus making things more expensive for EU citizens.
This is what I’ve been thinking about for Canada’s reaction - do nothing! I can’t say how it will affect us now and in the immediate future but it seems the damage is already done anyway. BTW. this is my 1st post on Lemmy - thank you!
Maybe not “do nothing” but I like the remove certain products from shelves. Like stop the sale of American alcohol from shelves.
We didn’t do nothing. We announced massive retaliatory tariffs. The do nothing impression came from the fact that they asked for concessions we already offered.
Also, the US is still hitting us with tariffs. Starting March 4, 25% on everything then in April an additional 25% on steel and aluminum.
I don’t get it. If we do retaliate, the US will have something to gain (back) by removing the tariffs.
I don’t know what studies you are referring to (please leave a link) but it seems counterintuitive to not have that bargaining chip to force a quick end to the tarriffs (See US vs Canada 2025, US vs Mexico 2025).
I don’t see how one could reasonably measure policies like these through time; of course it’s worse in the short term for all involved parties but should resolve the situation faster. If they only measure the time during active tarriffs of course it’s better through survivorship bias.
Eugster, J., Jaumotte, M. F., MacDonald, M. M., & Piazza, M. R. (2022). The Effect of Tariffs in Global Value Chains. International Monetary Fund.
Furceri, D., Hannan, S. A., Ostry, J. D., & Rose, A. K. (2020). Are tariffs bad for growth? Yes, say five decades of data from 150 countries. Journal of Policy Modeling, 42(4), 850–859. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2020.03.009
Schularick, M., & Solomou, S. (2011). Tariffs and economic growth in the first era of globalization. Journal of Economic Growth, 16(1), 33–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-011-9061-6
York, E. (2018). The Impact of Trade and Tariffs on the United States. Tax Foundation.
I read the abstract of the two links. The first one just says “tarrifs bad” without even mentioning our discussion above.
The second abstract said they did not find any evidence of “tarrifs good”, other factors had greater impact for growth. This is not the same question either.
try reading the entire articles. the question you asked are described in the lit reviews and discussion
I’m not going to buy a pdf for € 40…
