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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>As a French person, I can't help but feel like there's some sort of personal attack happening there. Wine and airplanes? Hey, I think you guys forgot to tax cheese and sarcasm while you're at it!

Didn't the EU do the same thing with their retaliatory tariffs a few years ago? They were taxing some uniquely "american" goods, eg. harley davidson motorcycles.

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Actually, most EU tariffs are rather poorly targeted. China is much better at making sure the pain is felt in very specific states and congressional districts to ensure that the message is delivered. Harleys, like wine, is generally considered a luxury good and so makes an easy target.

What's preventing the EU from being more targeted like this? Is it the collaborative deliberation (EU) vs. single-party rule (CN)?

Is targeted tariffs something the G8/WTC doesn't like/promote?

To be honest I am not sure. From what I have read you were right on the first guess. When China applies tariffs it is a single political body making the decisions, while the EU needs to deal with a lot of different national interest groups all applying to get the benefits of tariffs for their product or service. Back when Trump started doing his initial rounds of tariffs and inviting reciprocation from China and the EU the Economist had a nice map that showed the regions impacted by the tariffs from the EU vs. China. The EU tariffs were all over the place and a lot of them hit west coast areas that competed with the EU but had little impact on the decision-making, while the Chinese tariffs looked like a 2016 electoral map. (The latter was probably helped by the fact that China imports more cereal grains from the US than does the EU so they had an easy way to hit midwest and great plains states.)

Its unseemly to directly get involved in US politics by targeting specific congressional districts to send a message. That's the sort of stuff many Americans were outraged about after the 2016 election.

I don't think wine is seen as a luxury good in most of Europe. Pretty big part of the local culture in most countries (at least France, Spain, Germany, Italy).

I think they meant in the country imposing the tariff. Wine is definitely perceived as more of a luxury good in the US than it is in Europe.

That was symbolic, I think for something Trump did. It probably didn't even had a real impact on Harley Davidson sales in Europe.

It was chosen because many know the brand, escalating a trade war would be stupid for both sides.

It was targeted at specific congressmen iirc, wasn’t Kentucky (McConnell?) targeted through a bourbon tariff?

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