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Comment by jamesblonde | Hacker News Reader

They control Europe's digital infrastructure and are able to increase rent to usurous levels (tarrifs!) because Europe is dependent on their digital services. Without digital sovereignty, Europe has no sovereignty and will quickly become a modern colony from which wealth will be extracted.

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The reason the US is able to raise rents (tariffs) has nothing to do with Europe buying US digital services.

The tariffs are on European exports. The problem is Europe has a weak domestic consumer market and is dependent on selling stuff to the US, not buying from them.

The EU has a services deficit compared to the US, the US has a goods deficit compared to Europe. Together, they are almost in balance, the difference is just 3% of total trade [1]. Put differently, the US and the EU need each other. This is why Trump is using footguns.

[1] https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-cou...

The problem is really that Europe has a few dozen weak consumer markets. If there really was a proper single market, I suspect the EU would be much more competitive in digital services.

Unfortunately despite their best efforts this isn't something Eurocrats can simply will into existence. The most important prerequisite is a common language, and there is zero political will to do the only sensible thing and establish English as the official common language of the EU.

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> Nonsense. Unilaterial tarrifs are not how trade agreements work. This is pure extractive rent.

What do you mean by "unilateral tariffs"?

> The reason the US is not able to extract the same rents from China is that they have digital sovereignty and the US cannot just pull the cloud plug from them.

The US has higher tariffs against Chinese imports than European imports.

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