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piokoch04/03/20254 repliesview on HN

Do you know how many taxes on many goods European Union has introduced? Was that "empire hubris" as well?


Replies

ta124304/03/2025

Why don't you enlighten us?

csantini04/03/2025

Not only America will be poorer. Everyone will be poorer

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csantini04/03/2025

Everyone puts taxes on some sectors. It's economic policy. Trump is not doing economic policy. He's using a simple formula to ideologically reduce trade deficit. No matter the consequences!

Trust the experts: America will be poorer because of these tariffs.

acdha04/03/2025

Why don’t you show some data supporting a more clearly-stated theory? All countries use economic policy, but there’s usually some kind of strategy involved - for example, the EU has a tariff on American steel and aluminum because that was retaliation from Trump’s earlier tariffs. Similarly, a lot of the EU agricultural duties are both protecting local industries but also enforcing quality or safety standards (this is also the reason for the Australian beef imbalance the President mentioned: they have a strict mad cow containment plan American producers dont follow).

The American action doesn’t follow a discernible strategy other than the fantasy that we can somehow “win” every trade relationship. That’s why you see massive taxes on poor countries we buy a lot of raw materials from - Madagascar can’t afford to buy the kind of expensive goods we primarily make, but we love to buy vanilla, so that trade “deficit” is both voluntary and to our mutual benefit.