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I'm not sure the US wants to bring attention to its massive trade surplus in services if I was the EU I would have responded to the threats of goods tariffs wi

by blibble 11mo ago

I'm not sure the US wants to bring attention to its massive trade surplus in services if I was the EU I would have responded to the threats of goods tariffs with a threat of service tariffs that will start off slow and increase every month that tariffs remain in effect initially 0% tax on Office 365/AWS/facebook+google ad sales, then after a year it's 20%, and so-on

delusional 11mo ago
That's exactly what they did. They didn't want to escalate the conflict, so they didn't end up using it. It's what they refer to as their "trade bazooka", and it's still around ready to be used.
- blibble 11mo ago
  it's not exactly what they did, because a "bazooka" is easy defeated by the same ratchet mechanism the other side will never push enough at once to make bazooka style retaliation the correct strategy
  - sealeck 11mo ago
    > because a "bazooka" is easy defeated by the same ratchet mechanism That's an argument for capitulation in general: it's not an argument specifically against extending the field of scope to include services.