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Comment by tossandthrow | Hacker News Reader

The down votes are due to the persons inappropriate snarkiness and complete lack of awareness.

The current trade war is initiated by the US, why it is interesting how EU consumers react to that.

This is akin to me hitting you in the face, then you hitting me back - and then I could ponder how you would feel about being hit in the face and how that could teach you a lesson - well, I just saw what happens when I hit you in the face.

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> initiated by the US

While I don't approve, didn't the EU charge the US tariffs that were twice as high as what the US charged the EU?

You can take a look at the slightly out-of-date import duties here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff_ra...

To summarize, EU countries levied 1.49 % on average on imports in 2021, the US levied 1.48 % on average. Probably there are singular items that diverge from this average.

> While I don't approve, didn't the EU charge the US tariffs that were twice as high as what the US charged the EU?

I'm afraid i'll need the exact sections of the trade agreement document that stipulates these tariffs so that I can compare myself. Otherwise this is hearsay for me.

I am not aware of such. My intuition is that it was relatively balanced (taking services into account, where the US is big due to Google, MS, and friends).

But I stand corrected if there are some good sources.

I don't usually reply to replies but I was asking because I'm not sure. About a decade ago I was looking into the 'Chicken tax' and went down a tariff rabbit hole. A cursory search now is quite difficult due to all of the recent news and changes. And also millionshort seems to require an account now to do advanced searches. So about the best I could do is ask ChatGPT for a chart comparing average tariff rates by sector for the US and EU before 2016. But I'd rather not.

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