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It was tongue in cheek, since only governments can effect actual tariffs. However, the consumer effects of a "tax" or surcharge on a foreign service applied to
by overfeed 1y ago
It was tongue in cheek, since only governments can effect actual tariffs.
However, the consumer effects of a "tax" or surcharge on a foreign service applied to a specific jurisdiction are indistinguishable from a tariff. The only difference is the money doesn't go to the government treasury - in any case, that's not the reason most governments introduce tariffs. If Google were to introduce a Europe surcharge, they'd be ironically in alignment with Brussels.
- nonethewiser 1y agoThere are a lots of examples of geo-based pricing that I dont think you'd consider a tariff. Cloud services, Uber, Spotify subscription, etc. They cost different things based off the country you are in. I guess you could try to distinguish between why they cost different prices in different countries and in some cases it's largely purchasing power parity, but others it absolutely is operational cost differences, such as cloud services. Uber is a bit more mixed - there are definitely purchasing power differences but there are also different regulatory requirements. All that is to say you could never really tease it all out perfectly in practice.
- overfeed 1y ago> All that is to say you could never really tease it all out perfectly in practice. Sure, if the folk at Google that coordinate this hypothetical Euro-fine surcharge entirely in person with no paper trail and are confident there will be no whistleblowers. No oversight body with subpoena powers needs to "tease out" any information, they'll directly request the pricing formulas, related emails and underlying data for 2015-2025 and cross-check with consumer payments.