Hacker News Reader

Comment by thehappypm | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

I think it's not that bad, when you consider all goods ands services:

"For technical reasons, there is not one “absolute” figure for the average tariffs on EU-US trade, as this calculation can be done in a variety of ways which produce quite varied results. Nevertheless, considering the actual trade in goods between the EU and US, in practice the average tariff rate on both sides is approximately 1%. In 2023, the US collected approximately €7 billion of tariffs on EU exports, and the EU collected approximately €3 billion on US exports."

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...

39% on agricultural imports from the US.

Lee Kuan Yew referred to Europe as "fort Europa" for a reason many decades ago..

We don’t want a race to the bottom when it comes to agricultural products. American products are cheap but they suck. Ours are better but more expensive. Making American crap expensive is good for us. That’s a good use of tariffs: avoiding flooding the market with inferior products at the cost of local made.

Most countries have tariffs on the US. The media would have us believe Americans are the first ones to ever do it.

Still much lower than the US tariff on EU cars. (Those remain.)

A reasonable compensation for the trade barriers in the US. If anything, it's too low.

Why do Peterbilt trucks still exist? Don't US truckers deserve to drive Scanias and Volvos?

Volvo and Mercedes (freight liner) trucks are popular in the US. Truckers tell me Peterbuilt makes a good truck and compete well, but since I don't drive a truck I can't tell you what makes them better. I can tell you that Volvo and Mercedes are considered basic trucks for companies to own, while those who own their own truck like pay extra for luxury features in a Peterbuilt. (the only luxury I can see though is chrome decorations, again not being a trucker I have no clue if anything else is better or not)

There's a huge difference on charging tariffs on only cars and charging tariffs on everything.

They EU has a tariff on literally anything that comes in called the Commons Customs Tariff.

You forgot to mention that the tariff is literally zero in many cases (depends on the product and country).

And offered 0% tariffs on all physical goods (that includes agriculture) weeks ago. But no, Trump is financially illiterate and doesn't understand the concept of VAT.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com