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Comment by TuringNYC | Hacker News Reader

I know when we hear about NAFTA we usually think of industrials and manufacturing. Curious if anyone has a good analysis of NAFTA and the (obvious) first-order benefits it presents to the information economy -- since the US is a large net positive on that front.

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Yes, I expect that if Trump continues on his protectionist direction in some industries, there will be consequences in other ones. Why should the rest of the Western world allow Amazon, Google, Hollywood etc. to dominate their respective fields without tariffs or restrictions if the USA becomes protectionist where it suits Trump?

The EU and its countries are actively trying to tax Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. more than today for some time now. It's just not so easy. But that doesn't have anything to do with Trump, this started well before most people in Europe even knew him.

It's not so easy without upsetting established political conventions.

If those change though it becomes a lot easier to do.

And rightly so.

That's because those companies pay lower taxes than local companies. The real beef here isn't with the companies themselves, but with some smaller member states that steal the tax base of other bigger member states.

You are right, that's what e.g. the verdict against Ireland/Apple was about. But this is only part of the story. The verdict in this case was that Ireland let Apple pay lower taxes compared to other local companies. Some other EU-countries want to tackle a different thing: Apple (just to give an example) not paying taxes on the profit they make in each country individually but only in Ireland (in the case of Apple) for all (EU-)countries combined.

(Anecdata)

A Canadian friend of mine is now a US citizen who immigrated to the States on a NAFTA related (T?) visa. Now that he's losing his eyesight, companies like Apple and governmental bodies like the Obama White House invited him to advise on disability issues. His presence is definitely a plus for the disabled in America even if you argue that a native born citizen could have achieved the same results.

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