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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

No, not good for Canada. Free trade is optimal, even if its unilateral.

The EU should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.

You're not going to get free trade if it's unilateral, because you've then created an incentive for the other side to protect their own industries knowing you're not going to retaliate, while reaping the benefits of access to your market.

Unilaterally not hitting you head against the wall is bad, because you remove the incentive for the other side to stop hitting their head against a wall?

> while reaping the benefits of access to your market.

Huh, what? Trade is a win-win situation: you and your people benefit from imports, too.

Your analogy is flawed, because there is no benefit to hitting your head against the wall, but your domestic businesses benefit from reduced competition.

And that also answers your second objection - if governments never gave preference to business interests over people, the world would look very different.

> [...] but your domestic businesses benefit from reduced competition.

And the rest of your domestic businesses and consumers suffer.

You can also tax all right-handed people and give the proceeds to all the left-handed people in your country.

None of which changes what I wrote.

Nope, the EU should use the trade bazooka against the US.

The trade bazooka was an empty threat. This is somewhat similar to the trillion dollar coin[1]. It's a tool used for negotiations, not a real thing. If the trade bazooka was real, wasn't this the best opportunity to use it? What else could it be saved for?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin

the trade bazooka was made to threaten china, not the US. its just conveniently placed at the moment

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