Maybe get back to the original question and the reason Trump is interested in starting a trade war? Why is it OK for other countries to levy tariffs against us but not the other way around?
— The NY Times
China’s weight average tariffs are 3x higher than the United States, approximately 10% vs 3.5%.
"Once value-added taxes and sales taxes are included in an international comparison, America’s taxes on imports are much lower than those of almost every other country."[1]
The point still stands when not considering VAT, but the difference is far less pronounced. Though I am hesitant to trust the authors' research given the above.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/business/trade-chin..., also https://tradediversion.net/2017/03/08/on-the-nyts-building-t...
U.S. exports to the European Union enjoy an average tariff of just three percent.
Source: https://www.export.gov/article?id=European-union-Import-Tari...
In 2016, according to the World Bank, the average applied U.S. tariff across all products was 1.61%; that was about the same as the average rate of 1.6% for the 28-nation EU
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/22/u-s-tariffs-...
US to EU average import tariffs differ only by ~1.4%, sure the US tariff is (slightly) lower but it's hardly a huge imbalance.
Edit: just picking up from morsch's comment, these are international trade tariff figures which is what Trump is imposing. What countries do internally when it comes to sales or Value Added Tax is a whole different thing; these types of taxes apply to all goods and services sold within that country, regardless of origin (i.e. regardless of whether a pencil is manufactured in the UK or the US, it will still attract a domestic sales/VAT of 17.5% if sold in the UK).
Talking about fairness, it is fair for US to print their own currency and buy goods around the world, while other countries can't do the same? The reserve status of dollar doesn't come by itself, there is a price to pay, you can't have the cake and eat it.
Japan has nearly 200% higher agriculture tariffs than the US.
Which have a lot of holes in them. The US sends thousands of tons of un-tariffed rice to Japan every year, which they then lock into a shed and let rot. Which is their prerogative, I guess.
I see this comment a lot, I think Trump also said this, but I wonder what specific tariffs is this talking about?
My country (Netherlands) has a negative trade balance with the US, we buy a lot of software, entertainment and (heavily subsidized) Tesla's from the US. Even the "German" car I drive (a BMW) is manufactured in the US because of US trade demands. Also many international trade laws are heavily influenced by US policies that mostly benefit the US (i.e. IP, drugs).
It seems pretty clear that Trump started this trade war because he didn't like the existing equilibrium. And because he is who he is, other countries must be to blame.
I think US people will have to get used to the idea that maybe the US economy is not competitive and US people have been living above their means for a long time now. There are a lot of things the US can do to improve their competitiveness: education, health, corruption, equality, finance all have real impact on the economic competitiveness of a country and you can't make a mess out of it without it having real consequences.
US companies also will have to learn to deal with the fact that the US no longer is the single biggest economy in the world, and the US can't set the rules unilaterally. Trump is helping a lot weeding out the diplomatic goodwill that the US historically enjoyed.
US business is spoiled with their huge home market and seems to find it very hard to adapt to smaller country's rules. In order to export successfully in a more level world, you have to play it by their rules. If my country want to export flowers to Japan, and they allow them only when sterile and without a grain of sand, and they only like bright colors, then we will make them so.
Your car was built in the US because the labor is cheaper and 40 percent of their cars are sold in the US and China (shipping to China from the US is basically free, better off being here).
The reason for starting it was explained in completely different ways. Therefore it's not clear. It's both for security reasons as well as being easy to win as well as a supposed unfair imbalance. There's no consistency.