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"Among the goods to see an impact from the widened net of additional duty are European made wines, which will attract a 25% duty, and French and German-made air

• jdsully 6y ago
  They are upset at France taxing tech companies. The targeted attack is very much intentional and intended to be a tit for tat.
  • godzillabrennus 6y ago
    Trade wars are fun like that. Hopefully cooler heads prevail after the wine industry in France gets their politicians to back down.
  • gridder 6y ago
    Except tech companies pay almost 0 taxes in Eu, while wines etc. were already @ 14%, raised @ 25 %. Also tech companies have no competition in the EU, while wines and planes have competition in the US.
    • snarf21 6y ago
      It is retaliation against GDPR and tax lawsuits
    • SllX 6y ago
      Trade wars aren’t about fairness, they’re about leverage. Fairness would be no tariffs at all and no taxes that effectively act as tariffs because there’s no comparable domestic competition. Life isn’t fair though.
      • ouid 6y ago
        I don't know about no tariffs beig the fairest model. One reasonable thing to impose tariffs on is products made with slave labor, or labor paid at less than the minimum wage in your own country. The benefits are twofold, disincentivizing slave labor in other countries, and incentivizing local supply.
        • SllX 6y ago
          No, I mean in fairness, no tariffs is about as fair as it gets as far as trade goes. There are good reasons to impose tariffs otherwise. Slavery is a good reason, and the counterparty-country being a communist dictatorship is another good reason. You want to start a list?
          • InitialLastName 6y ago
            More generally, I think you could call tariffs "fair" that seek to keep companies in your market from being punished by compliance with the regulatory environment. In an increasingly "liquid" global trade market, tariffs can let you regulate businesses in your country to a higher (read: more expensive) standard (be it to protect labor, the environment, consumers, shareholders or IP) while protecting the compliant business (and industry as a whole) from being undercut by competitors in countries that don't have those protections. If effective, there can be a second order effect that pressures other countries to raise their standards as well.
            • SllX 6y ago
              Nah, I think that’s conflating fairness to the business environment with fairness in trade. The fairest trade is where two people walk away after an exchange with both people feeling like they made out well in that exchange. Tariffs are a form of state interference in these exchanges because to import my fancy cheese, I have to pay more than the fair market value and shipping costs, I have to pay for a tariff as well. I just want my fancy cheese to go with my domestic wine, I don’t want to pay more than I have to for it. Now if the tariffs on both sides of the metaphorical pond sum out to zero so that imports on both sides paid about the same in tariffs, that’s fair, but that’s rare. Tariffs aren’t about fairness though. Now if you want to impose tariffs to be fair to the businesses operating in your regulatory environment, well that’s fair, but that’s a different type of fairness obliging a different set of entities. To be clear, I’m not anti-tariff. My priorities might be different, and all other things being equal I prefer no tariffs to tariffs by default, but let’s not pretend they’re intended to make trade fairer. They’re revenue first, retribution second (these last two may have flipped in the 20th century, but that’s a separate argument to have), and all other effects are tertiary.
    • rory 6y ago
      To elaborate on what others have said re: retaliation, EU tariffs on goods are generally higher than those of the USA[0], so if anything this will just close the gap and make total tariffs paid more even. The USA in general has the lowest import tariffs on goods of all major countries (even after all the Trump escalations). It also has a large goods import gap (importing much more than it exports). It makes up a lot of that gap in services, so when France passed a tax specifically targeting its most important "service" companies (internet giants), it sees that as a HUGE trade escalation, even though that absolute tax those companies pay in Europe was previously laughably small in absolute terms. One could argue that despite all the headline drama, evening US-EU goods tariffs and making US tech companies pay taxes in Europe lands on a more equitable arrangement, rather than de facto subsidizing EU agriculture and US tech. [0]It's hard to find intuitively meaningful numbers for this stuff since it's so complicated, but you can see that the EU "general goods" tariff has a mean average of 5.1% vs 3.4% for the USA here: https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/tariff_profiles20_e.pdf https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/tariff_profiles20...
    • daemin 6y ago
      I guess that means good news for Australian wine producers, since they can move the inventory designated for China to the USA as there should be some more demand for it.
    • fuoqi 6y ago
      It's funny to hear about "fairness" from EU, when it also tries to weasel out of tariff agreements with so called "anti-dumping measures" [0] and, after that attempt has failed, now it tries to do the same with "carbon tax" [1]. The latter is sold to public as a care about climate change, but as argued by many in reality it's simply a new form of tariff in the ongoing world trade war to offset serious inefficiencies brought by wide adoption of solar and wind energy with simultaneous drastic reduction of nuclear capacity. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto-eu-russia-idUSKCN24P1VO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto-eu-russia-idUSK... [1]: https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/good_11jun20_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/good_11jun20_e.h...
      • gridder 6y ago
        It was a reality check, not looking for fairness, you cannot compare apple to oranges. In that case I would have spoken about the Italians, who do not produce any plane, nor tax any big tech, but their wines and cheeses are fu*ed no matter what. Also the US consumers should not be happy to pay more for good quality food. Regarding your points you’re probably right, but I hope that without trump, the rest of the world will kind of revert back to more fairness.
  • tzs 6y ago
    It seems unlikely that the aircraft parts part has anything to do with that, given this: > They come as the tit-for-tat battle over aircraft subsidies continues to escalate. Both Boeing and Airbus are accused of taking government subsidies to support their businesses, and both Washington and Brussels have won cases at the World Trade Organization to levy tariffs in response. Occam's razor says we should go with the hypothesis that something that fits in perfectly with the ongoing actions both sides have been taking in a long running active dispute is probably part of that dispute.
  • antiman0 6y ago
    There is probably more to that - does the current administration really bother with tech companies? Or is it a move to further (a) deteriorate relations before the new admin takes over or (b) create leverage for upcoming trade talks?
  • tibiahurried 6y ago
    Unfortunately Europe pays for its inability to develop a strong tech echo system, so no matter what, Europe will always depend on US for any tech related product, there is no way out, but negotiate.
• ohyes 6y ago
  We’re American, we only allow bud light lime, velveeta, and sparkling turbojets.
• rationalfaith 6y ago
  It's a sad state of affairs indeed. It is is annoying that tax companies will be taxed so aggressively. There's a middle ground in a lot of things but it seems like Europe is becoming very antagonistic with aggressively taxing US tech companies.
  • ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    The tax is a countermeasure for the loopholes tech companies use to avoid paying tax here.
    • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      I suggest fixing the loopholes.
      • ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        Easier said than done. Either by intentional design or by lack of resources, both EU and US govs have a hard time winning this game of whack-a-mole when these megacorps have armies of top lawyers and consultants who's sole focus is finding legal ways to avoid paying taxes.
      • realusername 6y ago
        That's kind of what has been done, they have now a turnover tax, which is much harder to avoid.
      • naruvimama 6y ago
        The EU has to come to terms with it. The EU consists of small countries each of which have a long tradition of being the safe house of dictators, black/drug/war/bribe/stolen money, shell companies, tax havens. None of them want to give up these privileges, until now that is. Now that these are starting to have an impact at home, they have just started cleaning up.
  • realusername 6y ago
    US tech companies had about 10 years to properly pay their taxes, if anything, the US government should be happy it's happening so late.
• anewaccount2021 6y ago
  I expect Biden to photocopy the Trump trade agenda, and all indications are he will do exactly this. Not just with the EU, but China as well. Boeing is a major employer, union stronghold (still), and in rough shape. It would be political suicide for Biden to throw them under the (Air)bus just to blanket-reverse every Trump-era policy.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• avs733 6y ago
  if we import the wines and the airplanes, the next most French thing to import would be revolution. I suspect that is the problem. The US isn't very interested in good cheese or pointed sarcasm, its challenging to the palate.
  • geodel 6y ago
    I hope these good revolutionaries will find fine cheese, wine and ethically sourced gourmet food consuming bourgeoisie activists, especially those at tech companies, to be eminently suitable for summary execution in first round.
• jsight 6y ago
  Doesn't the EU already have very high tarriffs on a lot of things imported from the US? Cars for example?
  • csomar 6y ago
    I mean this is something people from both sides can agree with Trump on. The world has been taking the USA for a ride when it comes to trade. The EU is really defensive , and will protect its industry above else. It does also bully smaller countries (like Tunisia, stop illegal immigration or we reduce trade, etc...); but the US gets most of the bad press.
    • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > The world has been taking the USA for a ride when it comes to trade This is a function of our China policy and insistence on maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
  • volta87 6y ago
    I recall that when Trump started taxing European steel, the EU looked for companies in Republican states that were seen positively by Trump supporters and sniped them with extremely specific tariffs. Harley Davidson was one of these companies. They weren't doing well before they got caught in the middle of this trade war, since the "biker" culture it aimed at was shrinking globally, so in a move to survive they decided to move production to South America. Turns out their audience didn't like this move, and its death accelerated. TL;DR: Trump put a tax on European steel, and the EU snipped Harley Davidson in retaliation.
    • CydeWeys 6y ago
      Trade wars do tend to be bad for everyone involved. Like rent control, it's very hard to find any economist that will even support it.
    • kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      HD was on deaths door anyway even without Trump. They've been playing financial games with production for the past 20 years and their core customers are aging out.
• TheAnswerMan 6y ago
  If you punch the US in the gut with tariffs you may get reciprocation.
  • grey-area 6y ago
    Yes, because history shows that trade wars are good and easy to win!
    • ericmay 6y ago
      Sure, but what do you expect the US to do? The EU could just not do what they’re doing. It’s very clearly a reaction from the US to an action by the EU.
    • TheAnswerMan 6y ago
      You may want to tell that to France.
      • ginko 6y ago
        Do you disagree that tech companies should pay taxes for the money they gain in a country?
        • tannedNerd 6y ago
          They are currently following EU law and France has decided to go rogue and tax them on their own.
          • volta87 6y ago
            The EU is not a country nor a federation. Companies that want to operate in EU countries need to abide by each countries laws. The EU just provide a minimum set of laws that must be abided by all countries, but that's pretty much it. Each country uses these laws as a base, and provides its own super set of laws on top. The EU doesn't really have many tax regulations, so a country like Ireland might think "How else will I attract industry here?", and decide to allow companies to put a mailbox there in exchange for operating in the EU tax free. This double-screws all other countries, first, because these companies pay zero taxes, so their tax contribution to the EU is zero. Second, because Ireland remains poor, because these companies pay almost zero taxes, so other countries need to send them money. France didn't like this, so they introduced a tax that both French and non-French companies must pay (it is illegal in the EU to discriminate by country, so this tax affects French companies as well). And that's pretty much it. This tax is high because it needs to compensate for the lack of taxes these companies pay in France, and for the money France needs to send to the tax heavens in which these companies operate. TBH I hope other EU countries will follow France's example, and that at some point, when most countries have these rules in place to avoid getting double-screwed, the EU as a whole can agree on a set of regulations to forbid tax heavens within the EU. Such a set of regulations needs a pretty high buy in from all EU countries (essentially unanimous consensus), and countries that cannot otherwise attract industry are incentivized to be against it. With these new taxes, Tech companies will be more incentivized to move to the places in which it makes most physical sense for them to be, instead of a freaking mailbox in the artic. At that point, the incentive from Ireland and other tax heavens will be small, since there won't be any point for companies to move there in the first place. --- Also, while the EU usually negotiates as a front, the EU itself is a union, so it has little to absolutely no power over what any EU country does. Within the union, you have federation republics like Germany, presidental republics like France, monarchies with kings like Spain, and... without really stretching it... some EU countries aren't even democracies and are more like dictatorships. Point being, getting something done at the EU level requires widespread consensus, but the EU is extremely heterogeneous and consensus is really hard, which is why the EU gets nothing done, and why each country does whatever it wants. The EU doesn't even have a constitution. It might be easy to criticize, e.g., the federal response to COVID in the US, but that's because people actually expected a Federal response to it, because there could have been one. In the EU, the federal response was almost non-existent, but nobody expected any because the EU has no power to do anything in this case. I don't really know whats worse.
• gruez 6y ago
  >As a French person, I can't help but feel like there's some sort of personal attack happening there. Wine and airplanes? Hey, I think you guys forgot to tax cheese and sarcasm while you're at it! Didn't the EU do the same thing with their retaliatory tariffs a few years ago? They were taxing some uniquely "american" goods, eg. harley davidson motorcycles.
  • evgen 6y ago
    Actually, most EU tariffs are rather poorly targeted. China is much better at making sure the pain is felt in very specific states and congressional districts to ensure that the message is delivered. Harleys, like wine, is generally considered a luxury good and so makes an easy target.
    • r00fus 6y ago
      What's preventing the EU from being more targeted like this? Is it the collaborative deliberation (EU) vs. single-party rule (CN)? Is targeted tariffs something the G8/WTC doesn't like/promote?
      • redis_mlc 6y ago
        > What's preventing the EU from being more targeted like this? The CCP is engaged in spying on the US down to the local politics level as part of their total war strategy. Read about FangFang to see that in action.
      • evgen 6y ago
        To be honest I am not sure. From what I have read you were right on the first guess. When China applies tariffs it is a single political body making the decisions, while the EU needs to deal with a lot of different national interest groups all applying to get the benefits of tariffs for their product or service. Back when Trump started doing his initial rounds of tariffs and inviting reciprocation from China and the EU the Economist had a nice map that showed the regions impacted by the tariffs from the EU vs. China. The EU tariffs were all over the place and a lot of them hit west coast areas that competed with the EU but had little impact on the decision-making, while the Chinese tariffs looked like a 2016 electoral map. (The latter was probably helped by the fact that China imports more cereal grains from the US than does the EU so they had an easy way to hit midwest and great plains states.)
• mytailorisrich 6y ago
  That's fine. With the tariffs China has slapped on American (93%) and Australian (200% !) wine Europeans have what is now the largest international market (and growing) all to themselves. In fact the US have tried to prop up (and placate) their wine producers since that because the Chinese market completely dried up for them. So I see these tariffs on European wine as killing two birds with one stone for the US government but not necessarily hitting European producers that hard (as said, at this point Chinese will buy as much wine as Europeans are able to sell them...)
  • addicted 6y ago
    The US has screwed itself so badly in the international arena it's not even funny. It's gone from leading the world to being able to barely find 1-2 supporters in UN resolutions. I mean, it can barely find 2 countries of the tens of countries with populations smaller than Staten Island to support its resolutions in the UN. The major problem for the US is that the administration has declared war on everyone, including allies. So it doesnt find any support, even from allies, because even if they agree with the US's action, they are worried that it will come back to bite them. A classic example of this is that Trump spend years railing about China but only imposed tariffs on them more than 2 years into his administration. In the meanwhile, within months of assuming office, he had already imposed tariffs on Japan, much of Europe, Canada, Australia, etc...basically, all allies. So when time came to impose tariffs on China, none of the American allies were prepared to support the US, which meant the US had to go alone in imposing tariffs that turned out to be pretty ineffectual (China's net exports to the US are higher than ever) and further, have damaged US exports to China considerably by forcing them to find alternatives to American supplies (Brazil for soyabeans as an example, which had the wonderful knock on side effect of accelerating the destruction of the Amazon...).
    • mytailorisrich 6y ago
      With the Chinese economy growing more important by the day you would think that the US would try to keep trade with Europe (i.e. inter-dependency) as high as possible instead of basically encouraging them to strengthen their relation with China... And as it happens the EU and China have just signed an investment treaty, which goes in that direction.
• icare_1er 6y ago
  I thought that by merging in the EU you would be a giant who would "balance the US and China" ? :) Oh by the way, note that by leaving the EU, the UK is effectively NOT impacted by those, ie. it is a direct trading advantage.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • toyg 6y ago
    Ah yes, the famous Brexit wine is ready to be exported the world over. /s
• klmadfejno 6y ago
  As an American, sarcasm doesn't register as something associated with the French to me. Something along the lines of snobbish perhaps. edit: not condoning either take...
  • agumonkey 6y ago
    because you really think I'm rich ? (this is meta comment, don't be offended)
    • klmadfejno 6y ago
      I don't really understand this. But no, not rich snobbish. Just francophone snobbish.
• medium_burrito 6y ago
  It's genius. French wines are consumed by a tiny portion of Americans, so it basically only affects a small slice of people who don't care if it costs a bit more.
  • cycrutchfield 6y ago
    That’s BS. Plenty of people care that it costs more. It also hurts American distributors of French wine as well, many have had their businesses suffer as a result of this stupid trade war.
    • esyir 6y ago
      Wine is weakly fungible. Specific wines, not so much, but I believe that the category of French wines can be effectively cross supplied by domestic American. Demand for wine should, in theory, shift there.
      • cycrutchfield 6y ago
        >I believe that the category of French wines can be effectively cross supplied by domestic American For the majority of the population, maybe. But for people that actually care about wine, this couldn't be farther from the truth. It's kind of like saying that domestic American whiskeys are roughly equivalent to Scotch.
        • esyir 6y ago
          Sure, not denying that, especially for the more hardcore wine aficionados out there. That's why I said weakly fungible, and not perfectly. However, I do believe that the intended result will happen still, and there will be a shift of spending from French -> US domestic. It's bad for the consumer, but that applies to anything that isn't fully free trade.
  • stickfigure 6y ago
    French wine is not more or less expensive than domestic wine; there are cheap and expensive options for both. It does, generally, have a different flavor profile. I'm nowhere near a 1%er and I strongly prefer the taste of old world wines. Count me among the annoyed.
• Vinnl 6y ago
  According to Dutch news [1] the EU and the US have been in a trade conflict for years now, with the EU previously (in November) instating its own tariffs on American aircraft parts and agriculture products. [1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2362596-vs-komt-met-heffingen-op-franse-cognac.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2362596-vs-komt-met-heffingen-op-fran...
• SEJeff 6y ago
  I don't think we forgot to tax sarcasm, we just like the English more than the French </sarcasm from a yank> We're all hopeful that things will get better when we have an actual adult in charge of America. Sorry on behalf of the rest of us for the mess that we've made of things. We're trying to fix it!
• maxerickson 6y ago
  Customers of airlines that already own Airbus planes will pay the tariffs, and they aren't particularly going to stop flying them over the prices of parts, so… Wine is probably less directly pointless to charge a tariff on, but if the tariff is on the import price, it won't particularly be a big piece of the retail price, and it will be paid by the person buying the wine. We are taxing ourselves to own the French!
  • OpticalWindows 6y ago
    there is no reason to reduce tariffs in the immediate future and tariffs are typically a long term function for them to work. the true winners of this is embraer, Bombardier, and a few others. Driving a wedge between us, eu is laser focused by many non eu, us companies due to the amount of possible market share gain. China is coming out with their own air transport company as well as a few other industries. So really it is US, EU vs the world in some of these interests.
• hyperman1 6y ago
  Interesting that it happens with France and wine. Not so long ago France decided to raise VAT on (Belgian imported) beer but not on (France fabricated) wine. Of course that had absolutely nothing to do with protectionism.
  • mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Except they did nothing of the sort. They just decided to tax all alcoholic beers as alcohol, and thus the same as wine. Before that beers with very low alcohol content were treated as non-alcoholic beverages, which enjoy a lower VAT rate. Makes no difference to Belgian beers, and France does produce quite a bit of beer as well (same or more than Belgium).
  • benhurmarcel 6y ago
    The French VAT is 20% on all alcohols. It doesn't make a difference between wine and beer.
  • hyperman1 6y ago
    EDIT: Sorry, everybody, I am indeed completely wrong here.
• Kalium 6y ago
  > As a French person, I can't help but feel like there's some sort of personal attack happening there. Wine and airplanes? Hey, I think you guys forgot to tax cheese and sarcasm while you're at it! Unless it comes from the proper region of the Ohio River Valley, I'm afraid it's just dry sparkling wit.
  • cmehdy 6y ago
    That would be the new world narrative yes. However, the word comes from the Greek σαρκασμός (sarkasmós) which is taken from σαρκάζειν (sarkázein) meaning "to tear flesh, bite the lip in rage, sneer"[0] Greece being in the EU, I think the EU has a pretty good claim to it! Alternatively, the English version of the word is definitely coming from the UK. Admittedly, most of the dry wit in the world comes from the perfidious Albion, so they too might have a claim when it comes to common usage (and perfecting the art of it). I'm afraid the Ohio River Valley will be stuck with calling it XXL sparkling wit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
    • Kalium 6y ago
      Ahh, but it's never really been about where a particular thing arose, has it? Few people think wine or cheese were invented in the EU. It's about where they have taken on a distinct form and become essential to the culture. I fear you are correct in that the UK has a strong claim on all counts here. That said, I think the Ohio River Valley has a distinctive form of sarcasm to the bone-dry wit of Albion.
      • 8note 6y ago
        the thing takes its name from the place, rather than the place taking its name from the thing though, so sarcasm can stay as sarcasm, and you can call the Ohio River valley wit something more specific
• LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  Ahem! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/dining/best-cheese-rogue-river-blue.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/dining/best-cheese-rogue-... I heard they have good wine and apples, too ;-> Liberté, Égalité, Puérilité! /me just shrugs and thinks more and more of Idiocracy, Planet of the Apes, and so on.
• u678u 6y ago
  Dude we make our own cheese. You can get a kilogram for just a few bucks and any warehouse store. (lol)
  • cmehdy 6y ago
    Compare it to this rudimentary map of the most well-known French cheeses though: https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/map-the-iconic-cheeses-of-france/ https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/map-the-iconic-cheeses-of-fra...
• jopsen 6y ago
  Isn't the the fall out from the trade dispute over subsidies that the US won? And is it possible the EU settled this trade dispute, because it established precedence for ruling on these kinds of trade disputes.. I'm not expert on this, but recalling here this tale told in a different light. In either case, as a European I'm not sure I mind tarriffs as a response to unfair subsidies when the subsidy practice has been ruled unfair by WTO. That door swings both ways. And if we've been unfairly subsidizing airbus I guess this is fine.
• rootsudo 6y ago
  This is not new, it's also in lieu of actions that happened some 17 years ago: "In 2004, the US argued that the French, Spanish, British and German governments had handed out loans to Airbus at interest rates well below market standards. The WTO ruled in favor of the US and decided that, as compensation for the damage caused to the US aviation industry, Washington could impose as much as $7.5 billion (€6.34 billion) worth of European exports. The decision principally affected products from Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Spain." https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2020-08-13/us-to-maintain-25-tariffs-on-spanish-cheese-wine-and-other-products.html https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2020-08-13/u... Lest we forget that EU also has high tariffs on US cars, and other exports.