This kind of thing is also necessary if we are to have a chance to compete with China. With Chinese companies I can just go on a company website and buy things like synthetic sapphire, hydrothermal quartz in large sizes, silicon carbide wafers, etc. with the price right there.
Call a European, American or Japanese firm, and they'll say no and won't even give you the price. Similarly, if you look at a running shoe, what can you buy a similar shoe for from these Chinese manufacturers? 1/10th the price, probably?
This means that prices in the west have become disconnected the physical reality because of agreements between manufacturers, middle men etc. If prices are this wrong it's going to make economic calculation in the west impossible, in the same way that Hayek imagined it made economic calculation impossible in market-less systems.
For market systems to have any use it's therefore not enough for you to have secure capital ownership or something like that-- you must have actual free markets, with it being easy for new competitors to enter so that the physical simplicity of certain things becomes apparent, because if you don't the prices can be such that a thing that should cost $10 costs $100, or $1000, and then it starts distorting things at the next level, people put off buying a shoe which should cost half what their lunch costs or for a company to try to use as little of some input as possible, not realising that that input is actually cheap and easy to make.
You're saying this as if the EU is just doing this for the hell of it. That's frankly just silly. And yes, I would expect that if an European company would be guilty of anti-competetive practices over there in the US, that the company would get repercussions.
And, well, if Trump wants to challenge us in a trade war again, be our guest. It probably won't go any better than last time.
Trump’s tariffs forced the EU to confront trade imbalances, especially around autos, and secured concessions on agricultural and energy imports, with the EU agreeing to buy more U.S. soybeans and liquefied natural gas. The U.S. also won a major WTO ruling on Airbus subsidies, allowing for tariffs on $7.5 billion of European goods, which put significant pressure on EU industries. Additionally, by pushing back on Europe’s digital services tax, the U.S. defended its tech sector and compelled the EU to negotiate at the OECD.
Altogether, Trump’s approach didn’t just expose EU dependence on the U.S. market but also reset the tone, signaling that the U.S. would take a much tougher line on trade going forward—arguably positioning America for longer-term advantages.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/6/21505027/congress-big-t...