So my question is when other countries start counter tariffs on services.
Office 365 is now 25 % more expensive.
Office 365 is now 25 % more expensive.
A 20% tax on Facebook and Google isn't going to do anything. A 20% on Office 365 is meaningful but only until they find software alternatives from anywhere else in the globe.
As for the US, O365 will not be more expensive but the cost of producing O365 will be. It will be up to execs to determine if they want to pass the costs to the shrinking number of businesses or if they want to eat the cost of production at the expense of shareholders.
Either way, American society is going to eat the cost, either in loss of customers or in loss of 401k.
But that isn't the only option that's available to these other countries:
> Dubbed a “bazooka” by some EU officials when it came into force in 2023, the ACI allows the bloc to select from a wide range of retaliatory measures, such as revoking the protection of intellectual property rights or their commercial exploitation, for example, software downloads and streaming services.[0]
Maybe it's time for other countries to respond by taking the copyright off of American media and setting up their own affordable streaming sites to a global market.
Why or why not?
The harmonization of EU IP laws with American ones was a quid pro quo done in exchange for the adoption of free trade agreements.
If America doesn't want to hold up their end of the bargain why should Europe?
I believe the European Union actually has a specific type of anti-tariff policy that they could implement that would eliminate intellectual property protections of software or entertainment companies from countries engaging in trade wars. It’s an option of last resort and I don’t think the EU would actually implement it in response to the Trump stuff but if they did it could be devastating for Silicon Valley and also for Hollywood.