Good headlines for sure, but i wonder:
Suppose the war ends. Will the Europeans keep boycotting the cheap russian gas?
Tarriffs are a nuisance to the US - the US doesn't export much.
Suppose the war ends. Will the Europeans keep boycotting the cheap russian gas?
Tarriffs are a nuisance to the US - the US doesn't export much.
Technology, services, social media... the US export A LOT to Europe. Any iPhone sold in Europe is money that goes to the US, any app sold in Europe is money that goes to the US. Any Ad seen on the web/social in Europe is money that goes to the us...
"Apple recorded sales of over 101 billion U.S. dollars in Europe during FY 2024, reaching an all-time high across the continent. " [1]
If Europe would start tariffs on those, it would be a lot of money.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/349086/apple-net-sales-i...
I think they absolutely will, yes. It will cost some money, just like spending more money on defense will, but from what I can see, no one in the European politic elite imagines a world where we can go back to buying gas from Russia.
How fast can Ukraine scrap the parts of the pipeline going through their own territory?
Even those countries that would quite like access to Russian gas, may just not have a choice in the matter.
And given we've already seen some spectacularly poor decision making by whoever fires the various missiles[0] that end up hitting multiple different nuclear reactors in the area, there's a non-zero risk of the entire border region suffering catastrophic (though likely not Chernobyl-1986 level[1]) radiation leak incidents.
This also makes it somewhat of a moot point to consider any mineral wealth besides oil, or even a return to normality for food output, at this point.
[0] Zaporizhzhia: both sides blamed the other, and irregardless of who did it, the nature of the damage says it was done by shelling; more recently Chernobyl's outer barrier was also hit.
[1] I think Russia still has some reactors with positive void coefficient in Kursk (near where Ukraine's counter-invasion was), but Ukraine itself has decommissioned all their positive void coefficient reactors.
So it's not impossible for another Chernobyl, but it's really unlikely.
US to EU gas trade is insane right now due to pricing and a 20% tariff won't change anything.
It’s possible all economists are wrong. It is more likely they aren’t. Tariffs are going to hurt middle and lower classes.
For starters, they will shock well greased supply chains, that will cause shortages and thus price raises. Who suffer price raising the most? Then, protected industries will have quasi-monopoly power to raise prices (this is the populism behind tariffs). But other industries will suffer because they can't import their resources and have to switch to more expensive and/or lower quality locals. As an example: suppose that car makers are happy with tariffs protecting them from japanese cars, but now they have to buy expensive US steel, and have to move their assembly lines back to US where today is hard to find experienced and cheap workers. Because everyone always claim to want industry back, but then nobody wants a blue collar job if they can get a white collar one.