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.

  • turnip@lemm.ee
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    48 minutes ago

    Can someone explain to me why this is worse than Europes VAT tax?

    According to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) study, any nation that switches to VAT initially feels the negative impact of reduced tax revenues. In the long run, however, the study concluded that VAT adoption has in the majority of cases increased government revenue and proved effective.

    It seems to be proven quite effective, and Europe still has them, so why is Trumps worse/better than a VAT?

  • AidsKitty@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Not an untrue statement. The EU was formed to make them more financially competitive and stop the endless internal warfare.

    • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Are you kidding? The major achievement of the pact has been to stop wars among its members, something that the US highly appreciated after the WW. All presidents up to Trump have been in strong favour of the EU, and EU expansion. Obama campaigned against Brexit. Bush junior strongly pushed for expansion into Eastern Europe. They all realised how much they benefited from having strong allies. Incredible how quickly that lesson has been forgotten.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      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.

    • SGG@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Capitalism.

      Side effects include electing a complete moron and his piss baby groupies to the presidency

  • ehpolitical@lemmy.ca
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    11 hours ago

    Would love to be in the guy’s head for just 5 minutes, to see if he’s high or crazy or what.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      The bat needs to bounce back and also hit the fascist ball in the face. Making things worse for everybody for no reason!

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      14 hours ago

      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.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 hours ago

          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.

          • PlaidBaron@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            He pushed it by a month again. Now its for sure actually defenitely gonna happen in April Im serious guys no really.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 hours ago

          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.

  • fieryhamster007@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    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?

  • Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    17 hours ago

    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

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    18 hours ago

    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”.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      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!

  • deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    15 hours ago

    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?

  • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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    17 hours ago

    Wake me when that pussy manages to even speak in his own cabinet meetings without elon interrupting.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Any attempts of anyone to do anything he doesn’t like is an attempt to screw him in his eyes.

    The EU’s major effect isn’t harm to the us but keeping France, England, and Germany from shooting each other

  • Lit@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    And the bloc of 50 united states was formed to screw the bloc of european union ?