EU readies €93B tariffs in retaliation for Trump's Greenland threat

23 pointsposted 9 hours ago
by saubeidl
(ft.com)

16 Comments

mindcrash

3 hours ago

And if that is not enough, I just learned (through Deutsche Bank) we in Europe own around $8 trillion in US treasury bonds and equities.

FAFO, Orange Man.

elbci

8 hours ago

The "Oohhh...I get it now... F_ck!" will be epic. At some point they will rediscover that insight from 1917 explaining that money are not backed by gold or oil or even leaving your computer overnight - money are backed by guns! Why is this green paper money and this pink one that I like better is not? / Because my big gun say so!

pu_pe

8 hours ago

It will be interesting to see where those tariffs will be targeted. The EU might target digital services, for strategic and political reasons.

ReptileMan

7 hours ago

And then USA will impose total blackout on services to EU for 1 week and we will lose 200B in productivity.

Right now EU is just in the bent over position and waiting to be fucked. By everyone. And Brussels don't have the vaguest idea how to get out of it.

adamtulinius

6 hours ago

That will cause a total loss of EU-money ever being spent on US digital goods for a generation.

lawn

an hour ago

How do you imagine this move would harm the American companies?

This would light a fire under everyone to migrate away from any digital service connected to the US, including people outside of Europe, as you know it can all be shut down by the whims of a senile old man.

It would be such an epic own goal that it boggles the mind.

saubeidl

6 hours ago

I'm sure Baidu and Alibaba would be happy to scoop up those giant contracts if the Americans were to try...

mamonster

7 hours ago

My prediction: Before end of 2026 at least one European government (likely Denmark or Norway) will get hit with OFAC sanctions. This is the one lever that Trump has apart from tariffs that is super painful and does not need any approval from Congress AFAIK.

jacquesm

6 hours ago

Assuming that still does not lead to impeachment and conviction that's on the US, and I'm pretty sure that the EU will stand united against such pressure. The temperature in the room has changed considerably in the last 90 days.

ReptileMan

8 hours ago

The things with tariffs is that they are bad for the stronger side and devastating for the weaker. We are not 2006 anymore when the EU economy was bigger than US.

jltsiren

7 hours ago

You must be thinking of 2008. And the EU economy was not bigger than the US back then. There was a temporary distortion in currency exchange rates, as people saw a significant risk that the financial crisis would cause serious long-term damage to the US economy. It didn't, the exchange rates normalized, and the illusion that the EU economy was bigger vanished.

Currencies are speculative instruments, not reliable measures. If you measure the economy of one entity in the currency of another entity, you should never accept the numbers at face value.

saubeidl

8 hours ago

They're devastating for the less diversified side.

The EU just signed a giant trade deal with Mercosur, creating the world's largest free market.

ReptileMan

7 hours ago

An economy bloc that is on decline makes a trade deal with economies that have been in shitter for almost a hundred years. I mean I approve it. I love Brazilian and Paraguayan beef and Ron Zapata is quite drinkable. But that idea that it will bring economic might to the two regions enough to push the USA out has yet to be seen if it is realistic.

atoav

8 hours ago

Tariffs are devastating for the smaller market and highly dependent on whether you can sell the stuff that is tariffed elsewhere in the world and whether the other side can buy the stuff that is getting tariffed elsewhere in the world. The stuff the US gets from Europe is pretty specialized and given the US tendency to continuously isolating itself while others are making trade deals, the others could just decide to do world economy without the US at some point.

If the US didn't had the singular role of the USD it would have been in dire trouble a while ago. Now the incentives for keeping the USD are getting less and less.

If Trump was an agent to hurt the US position in the world, he wouldn't do anything differently.