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Comment by WJW | Hacker News Reader

Presumably a bunch of Europeans would lose their jobs if the Americans stop buying cars and machine tools and whatnot from Europe.

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Unfortunately yes. Our biggest company is Novo Nordisk, a company that sells weightloss drugs to Americans. It narrowly beats out LVMH, a company that sells luxury goods to Americans.

There's a risk that the US starts deciding that it won't respect pharma patents of non-US companies, even if they hold US patents, but that really does blow up the industry world wide and will cause the obvious retaliation of not respecting US patents overseas.

Novo Nordisk, probably. But surely LVMH's revenue is very diversified globally? The Middle-East and Asia are big markets for them.

On top of that they're luxury goods, their bought for their prestige. Barely anyone uses AWS for such reasons. Good luck convincing the wealthy in the US that some new US brand is a good replacement for their Louis Vuitton bags, Moët champagne and Bulgari watches.

The US has lots of ultra-luxury services, but very little such manufacturing.

You are correct, and I am being facetious. I would still rather we produce things like AWS, however. While it's more substitutable, it is so because the value is more rational and inherent.

> Good luck convincing the wealthy in the US that some new US brand is a good replacement for their Louis Vuitton bags, Moët champagne and Bulgari watches.

Depends how far the culture war goes.

I said it even with that in mind :) MAGA makes up a smaller part of the wealthy than may often be assumed. That group doesn't play by such rules, and is very used to getting what they want.

Well, maybe they can be used in the arms industry.

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