6 ms·

> This is going to further increase anti-EU sentiment. Rightfully so. Except for no-roaming-charges within EU, most people can't name one good regulation that

> This is going to further increase anti-EU sentiment. Rightfully so. Except for no-roaming-charges within EU, most people can't name one good regulation that came from EU and couldn't be handled individually by their own country in the last few decades. The latest example is 3eur customs tax per every item bought from china, even if it's a 1eur phone case (1eur + 3eur customs + 22% vat on both.... what's the added value of custom tax? who knows, but you pay it anyway). Add all the money wasting, horrible behaviour of politicians in charge, overpaid MEPs for what they do... it's no wonder people hate everything EU related. All sticks, no carrots.

kubafu 4mo ago
Tell me you don't see the value in the tax as a way of discouraging people from ordering a pair of socks from the other side of the globe, while they can buy them locally?
- Silhouette 4mo ago
  This is global trade and comparative advantage at work. If someone outside the country can produce an equivalent product to what a local producer would make, they can supply it to our market more efficiently than our local producers, and there are no moral qualms (for example people working under conditions that are unacceptable by our standards) then everyone benefits from the import arrangement except for the local producers who can't compete. From an economic perspective the local producer then needs to become more efficient and/or produce a better product to remain competitive. Alternatively they can do something else that is a more productive use of their time and skills. Again this is just a free market at work. The economic principle is no different if another local producer opened down the road from the existing local producer and they were the ones making the same product cheaper or a better product for the same price. Protectionism arguably has a place. For vital interests like national defence there is an argument for making certain things locally so you have complete control because of the security implications and because the normal rules of international trade and diplomacy might not be working properly at the time when you need those products. But even in fields like defence and strategic infrastructure and perhaps the most obvious example of simply putting enough food on everyone's plate to survive there are few if any Western nations that don't rely significantly on international trade. There is an example I always remember from the Brexit debates here in the UK. The Remain campaigners talked a lot about the advantages of being in the EU's Single Market and Customs Union. (These are the two big economic arrangements in the EU that allow member states to trade freely among themselves without tariffs or non-tariff barriers.) And certainly for intra-EU trade they do offer many economic advantages. However the cost of being under the protectionist umbrella was much less discussed - surprisingly even by Leave campaigners. All member states are required to apply the common EU-based tariffs to anything coming into their country from outside the union. So when the EU introduced extremely high tariffs to protect the fruit growers in its Mediterranean member states that was good for those growers. But we don't exactly grow a lot of citrus fruit in the UK with our milder northern European climate. We also already had some established trade routes with north African nations that could supply similar products at potentially lower cost and would have liked to increase that trade with us - a mutual benefit for both their suppliers and our consumers that would have cost neither of us anything directly. The EU tariffs made that financially unviable and therefore benefitted some of the southern member states but at the expense of both consumers in the UK (also an EU member state at the time!) and the more efficient suppliers from Africa. Protectionism is inherently inefficient economically. Sometimes it might be appropriate for other reasons but in purely financial terms it's almost always a negative effect.
- jvuygbbkuurx 4mo ago
  Why let a middleman rentseek?
  - tiahura 4mo ago
    Where is the rentseeking in that example? Rentseeking is the expenditure of resources to influence the rules so you can charge rent. The sock merchant in the example isn’t.
    - kmeisthax 4mo ago
      There are two levels of rentseeking in any tariff example. The first level is the intended rentseeking: we make imported socks from China more expensive so you buy domestically made socks instead. There are various excusable reasons why you would want to do this, but at the end of the day, we are still assigning the class of people who make socks domestically the ability to charge a supra-competitive price, which is a rent. The second level is unintended rentseeking. Maybe it turns out the economy really, really doesn't want to fund a domestic sock industry. Maybe our sockmakers are just really, really bad at making socks. Or maybe people really, really want foreign socks. In any of these cases, the people just pay the tariff no matter the cost. For example, Brazil has had extraordinarily high import tariffs on all sorts of consumer electronics. The intent is to create a domestic electronics industry. The reality is, however, Brazil was never going to be able to support that. Electronics are a highly exportable industry and the global market can only support a few countries being involved in it. So the result is that game consoles and smartphones are just really expensive purely for the benefit of people involved in the tax scheme.
    - jvuygbbkuurx 4mo ago
      I meant it like a retailer can buy it without the charge in bulk with a discount, but since the consumers can't, the retailer can increase the price. So the consumer pays more because of a middleman charging the difference. Ideally there is enough competition between retailers, but obviously that is not true if the consumers are buying from china in the first place. Instead of adding a fee, you should make the bulk imported item cheaper. If you can't compete then something is wrong, maybe something in single import being subsidized like air mail? If it's not then it's a more efficient system. And I'm strictly talking about exact same products produced in china, not equivalent products of worse quality.
- ajsnigrutin 4mo ago
  Because we don't make those socks locally. They come from the other side of the globe. For example, i want to buy a phone case... i can order one on aliexpress for ~1eur (free shipping) + 3eur tax + 88cents of vat and pay 4.88for it. Or I can go to my local mall, and buy the identical case, made by the same chinese manufacturer for 12-15eur. The middleman can order 100 of those cases and since they're the same TARIC code, he'll still just pay 3eur (total) in customs for all of them (3% customs, instead of 300% if you order 1 piece only) and still be much more expensive than if I order directly from china. So instead of paying 1eur + having 4 eur left over to go for a beer, i now pay almost 5eur, no local beer and 75% of that tax doesn't even go to my country but directly into EU budget. I can afford less and won't get anything out of that money. Yes, there's an employee in that cell phone store, but so is there an employee in my local bar where I can't afford beer anymore because EU took my money.
9dev 4mo ago
Are you kidding me..? The freedom of movement across all member states, including the right to settle and start a business anywhere you like, that's not a "good regulation" to you? Being able to pay in all of those states without paying FX rates, bringing home your purchases across the border without tolls or even checkpoints no less? The funding of a massive amount of public benefit projects in poorer member states, including art and artists, public health and education, infrastructure - all of that isn't worth anything? The ability to trust everything you buy to be safe, from child toys to food to cars? This list goes on for a long time. Many politicians have used the EU as a convenient scapegoat for inconvenient decisions, and people like you continue to spread completely uninformed FUD. Let's even put aside all the benefits you have but apparently either don't know or don't care about. How well do you think your home country would fare against the USA or China or Russia on its own? The only weapon all of us have against the big power blocks of the world is being a power block on our own. The EU isn't perfect, and I'm absolutely opposed to the Chat Control bullshit in its entirety, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
- logicchains 4mo ago
  >The freedom of movement across all member states, including the right to settle and start a business anywhere you like, that's not a "good regulation" to you That's not regulation, that's a reduction in regulation.
  - 9dev 4mo ago
    That’s a reduction in prohibitions, not regulation. You cannot enable this without regulating how it works.
- consensus1 4mo ago
  I think he is saying all those beneficial things could be done by multilateral agreements without the need for the additional layer of EU organization and bureaucracy. In fact some of them already have been done that way.
  - 9dev 4mo ago
mcv 4mo ago
There's the lack of customs charges for items from other European countries. The common market is a really big advantage. There's the Euro, and in the past, the EU did a fairly decent job at holding large corporations accountable, although that seems to have disappeared with Neelie Kroes' retirement. And of course the lack of borders. Being able to go on vacation with no trouble is massive. Do we really want those border checks back?
- tough 4mo ago
  Why one couldn't have all these without the EU ?
  - gpvos 4mo ago
    To hold large corps accountable you need clout, and the individual countries don't have that.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
- wqaatwt 4mo ago
  You didn’t need the EU for the removal of trade barriers and the common market. Both were established quite a while before the EU as we know it now became a thing in the 90s. > we really want those border checks back Why? You don’t need to be in the EU to belong to Shengen.
  - GTP 4mo ago
    The European Union is actually an union of treaties, with countries that sign some and not others. So here you would need to be more specific.
    - Chu4eeno 4mo ago
      Not really. Norway is not EU, it's EEA, which is more like what you describe (the population rejected joining twice in referendums, but the politicians still wanted some treaties).
Sharlin 4mo ago
> even if it's a 1eur phone case (1eur + 3eur customs + That's the fucking point for fuck's sake! Pardon my language, but the entire point of the tariff is to stop people from buying masses of trivial things from the other side of the world, with all the externalities that it entails. This tariff tries to cover at least some fraction of said externalities. People on HN should not be this clueless about basic economy. This tariff is one of the good things that the EU has done lately, but unfortunately it won't be popular among the common folk who just want their cheap unsustainable stuff without having to think about the consequences.
- sunaookami 4mo ago
  When Trump introduced tariffs everyone screamed but now the EU does EXACTLY the same and suddenly it's okay.
  - Sharlin 4mo ago
    Exactly? I find it very different.
- xienze 4mo ago
  > That's the fucking point for fuck's sake! Pardon my language, but the entire point of the tariff is to stop people from buying masses of trivial things from the other side of the world, with all the externalities that it entails. This tariff tries to cover at least some fraction of said externalities. Boy, when you put it that way it makes me wonder why people didn't appreciate the genius of Trump's tarrifs.
- ondra 4mo ago
  This is obviously not the point if the surcharge disappears on packages with total price over 150 €.
  - Sharlin 4mo ago
    It is, because (one of) the big problem(s) is people impulse buying individual cheap things in large numbers, taking advantage of free shipping when the shipping is obviously not free. These stores exploit the fact that international postage and customs agreements were never written with a giant volume of small parcels in mind, making it artificially cheap (for the sender) to spam the system with them.
gherkinnn 4mo ago
What have the Romans ever done for us?

kubafu 4mo ago

Tell me you don't see the value in the tax as a way of discouraging people from ordering a pair of socks from the other side of the globe, while they can buy them locally?

Silhouette 4mo ago
This is global trade and comparative advantage at work. If someone outside the country can produce an equivalent product to what a local producer would make, they can supply it to our market more efficiently than our local producers, and there are no moral qualms (for example people working under conditions that are unacceptable by our standards) then everyone benefits from the import arrangement except for the local producers who can't compete. From an economic perspective the local producer then needs to become more efficient and/or produce a better product to remain competitive. Alternatively they can do something else that is a more productive use of their time and skills. Again this is just a free market at work. The economic principle is no different if another local producer opened down the road from the existing local producer and they were the ones making the same product cheaper or a better product for the same price. Protectionism arguably has a place. For vital interests like national defence there is an argument for making certain things locally so you have complete control because of the security implications and because the normal rules of international trade and diplomacy might not be working properly at the time when you need those products. But even in fields like defence and strategic infrastructure and perhaps the most obvious example of simply putting enough food on everyone's plate to survive there are few if any Western nations that don't rely significantly on international trade. There is an example I always remember from the Brexit debates here in the UK. The Remain campaigners talked a lot about the advantages of being in the EU's Single Market and Customs Union. (These are the two big economic arrangements in the EU that allow member states to trade freely among themselves without tariffs or non-tariff barriers.) And certainly for intra-EU trade they do offer many economic advantages. However the cost of being under the protectionist umbrella was much less discussed - surprisingly even by Leave campaigners. All member states are required to apply the common EU-based tariffs to anything coming into their country from outside the union. So when the EU introduced extremely high tariffs to protect the fruit growers in its Mediterranean member states that was good for those growers. But we don't exactly grow a lot of citrus fruit in the UK with our milder northern European climate. We also already had some established trade routes with north African nations that could supply similar products at potentially lower cost and would have liked to increase that trade with us - a mutual benefit for both their suppliers and our consumers that would have cost neither of us anything directly. The EU tariffs made that financially unviable and therefore benefitted some of the southern member states but at the expense of both consumers in the UK (also an EU member state at the time!) and the more efficient suppliers from Africa. Protectionism is inherently inefficient economically. Sometimes it might be appropriate for other reasons but in purely financial terms it's almost always a negative effect.
jvuygbbkuurx 4mo ago
Why let a middleman rentseek?
- tiahura 4mo ago
  Where is the rentseeking in that example? Rentseeking is the expenditure of resources to influence the rules so you can charge rent. The sock merchant in the example isn’t.
  - kmeisthax 4mo ago
    There are two levels of rentseeking in any tariff example. The first level is the intended rentseeking: we make imported socks from China more expensive so you buy domestically made socks instead. There are various excusable reasons why you would want to do this, but at the end of the day, we are still assigning the class of people who make socks domestically the ability to charge a supra-competitive price, which is a rent. The second level is unintended rentseeking. Maybe it turns out the economy really, really doesn't want to fund a domestic sock industry. Maybe our sockmakers are just really, really bad at making socks. Or maybe people really, really want foreign socks. In any of these cases, the people just pay the tariff no matter the cost. For example, Brazil has had extraordinarily high import tariffs on all sorts of consumer electronics. The intent is to create a domestic electronics industry. The reality is, however, Brazil was never going to be able to support that. Electronics are a highly exportable industry and the global market can only support a few countries being involved in it. So the result is that game consoles and smartphones are just really expensive purely for the benefit of people involved in the tax scheme.
  - jvuygbbkuurx 4mo ago
    I meant it like a retailer can buy it without the charge in bulk with a discount, but since the consumers can't, the retailer can increase the price. So the consumer pays more because of a middleman charging the difference. Ideally there is enough competition between retailers, but obviously that is not true if the consumers are buying from china in the first place. Instead of adding a fee, you should make the bulk imported item cheaper. If you can't compete then something is wrong, maybe something in single import being subsidized like air mail? If it's not then it's a more efficient system. And I'm strictly talking about exact same products produced in china, not equivalent products of worse quality.
ajsnigrutin 4mo ago
Because we don't make those socks locally. They come from the other side of the globe. For example, i want to buy a phone case... i can order one on aliexpress for ~1eur (free shipping) + 3eur tax + 88cents of vat and pay 4.88for it. Or I can go to my local mall, and buy the identical case, made by the same chinese manufacturer for 12-15eur. The middleman can order 100 of those cases and since they're the same TARIC code, he'll still just pay 3eur (total) in customs for all of them (3% customs, instead of 300% if you order 1 piece only) and still be much more expensive than if I order directly from china. So instead of paying 1eur + having 4 eur left over to go for a beer, i now pay almost 5eur, no local beer and 75% of that tax doesn't even go to my country but directly into EU budget. I can afford less and won't get anything out of that money. Yes, there's an employee in that cell phone store, but so is there an employee in my local bar where I can't afford beer anymore because EU took my money.

9dev 4mo ago

Are you kidding me..? The freedom of movement across all member states, including the right to settle and start a business anywhere you like, that's not a "good regulation" to you? Being able to pay in all of those states without paying FX rates, bringing home your purchases across the border without tolls or even checkpoints no less? The funding of a massive amount of public benefit projects in poorer member states, including art and artists, public health and education, infrastructure - all of that isn't worth anything? The ability to trust everything you buy to be safe, from child toys to food to cars? This list goes on for a long time. Many politicians have used the EU as a convenient scapegoat for inconvenient decisions, and people like you continue to spread completely uninformed FUD. Let's even put aside all the benefits you have but apparently either don't know or don't care about. How well do you think your home country would fare against the USA or China or Russia on its own? The only weapon all of us have against the big power blocks of the world is being a power block on our own. The EU isn't perfect, and I'm absolutely opposed to the Chat Control bullshit in its entirety, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

logicchains 4mo ago
>The freedom of movement across all member states, including the right to settle and start a business anywhere you like, that's not a "good regulation" to you That's not regulation, that's a reduction in regulation.
- 9dev 4mo ago
  That’s a reduction in prohibitions, not regulation. You cannot enable this without regulating how it works.
consensus1 4mo ago
I think he is saying all those beneficial things could be done by multilateral agreements without the need for the additional layer of EU organization and bureaucracy. In fact some of them already have been done that way.
- 9dev 4mo ago

mcv 4mo ago

There's the lack of customs charges for items from other European countries. The common market is a really big advantage. There's the Euro, and in the past, the EU did a fairly decent job at holding large corporations accountable, although that seems to have disappeared with Neelie Kroes' retirement. And of course the lack of borders. Being able to go on vacation with no trouble is massive. Do we really want those border checks back?

tough 4mo ago
Why one couldn't have all these without the EU ?
- gpvos 4mo ago
  To hold large corps accountable you need clout, and the individual countries don't have that.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
wqaatwt 4mo ago
You didn’t need the EU for the removal of trade barriers and the common market. Both were established quite a while before the EU as we know it now became a thing in the 90s. > we really want those border checks back Why? You don’t need to be in the EU to belong to Shengen.
- GTP 4mo ago
  The European Union is actually an union of treaties, with countries that sign some and not others. So here you would need to be more specific.
  - Chu4eeno 4mo ago
    Not really. Norway is not EU, it's EEA, which is more like what you describe (the population rejected joining twice in referendums, but the politicians still wanted some treaties).

Sharlin 4mo ago

> even if it's a 1eur phone case (1eur + 3eur customs + That's the fucking point for fuck's sake! Pardon my language, but the entire point of the tariff is to stop people from buying masses of trivial things from the other side of the world, with all the externalities that it entails. This tariff tries to cover at least some fraction of said externalities. People on HN should not be this clueless about basic economy. This tariff is one of the good things that the EU has done lately, but unfortunately it won't be popular among the common folk who just want their cheap unsustainable stuff without having to think about the consequences.

sunaookami 4mo ago
When Trump introduced tariffs everyone screamed but now the EU does EXACTLY the same and suddenly it's okay.
- Sharlin 4mo ago
  Exactly? I find it very different.
xienze 4mo ago
> That's the fucking point for fuck's sake! Pardon my language, but the entire point of the tariff is to stop people from buying masses of trivial things from the other side of the world, with all the externalities that it entails. This tariff tries to cover at least some fraction of said externalities. Boy, when you put it that way it makes me wonder why people didn't appreciate the genius of Trump's tarrifs.
ondra 4mo ago
This is obviously not the point if the surcharge disappears on packages with total price over 150 €.
- Sharlin 4mo ago
  It is, because (one of) the big problem(s) is people impulse buying individual cheap things in large numbers, taking advantage of free shipping when the shipping is obviously not free. These stores exploit the fact that international postage and customs agreements were never written with a giant volume of small parcels in mind, making it artificially cheap (for the sender) to spam the system with them.

gherkinnn 4mo ago

What have the Romans ever done for us?