> Also, the often-mentioned US-EU trade deficit is not that big if you count in services. Which I think should be done in the 21st century. Large parts of the US economy are focused on digital high-value services, and they are "exported" worldwide.

This is why, in case of reciprocal tarriffs on physical goods, the US ends up the big winner - they don't apply to digital services, which are a huge part of US exports.

Now the world had slowly been catching onto this fact that they'd been getting absolutely rinsed by the FAANGs who have gotten their populace addicted to their opium and made trillions off of them without contributing anything meaningful back. For the first time, we were seeing digital services taxes - a decade overdue. Brazil now has one in place - great on them. The EU was also planning one, but then the tarriffs came, and suddenly voices are saying they might abandon it. If the current US gov was any other US gov, the obvious conclusion would be that they're using tarriffs as a pawn to prevent the rise of digital service taxes.

Obviously, in the current timeline this wasn't the main reason. But there's no way Mark, Satya, Jeff and Tim haven't been whispering into big leader's ear just how "unfair" these DSTs are.