Reverse technology transfer from countries like China is kind of fair. But EU companies should be very wary of Trump tariff blackmail that forces them to build production lines in the US.
This doesn’t stop Trump from pressuring and squeezing and making false claims to justify his standing point. Expect an unstable trade environment due to tariffs and retaliation. This will hurt small businesses that have even more complex environment to operate in.
VAT is what Americans call "sales tax" and US companies do pay and charge that.
That's the whole point of tariffs, to encourage domestic production.
Put another way, what is the difference between what you wrote and
>But US companies should be very wary of EU tariff blackmail that forces them to build production lines in the EU.
?
Whether a particular tariff is economically viable is a reasonable debate. Calling Trump's tariffs "blackmail" without assigning that epithet to all tariffs from whatever source is not.