Trump threatens tariffs on any nation that taxes Big Tech
Trump threatens tariffs on any nation that taxes Big Tech
Maybe using Regulation (EU) 654/2014.
This comment explains it a bit: feddit.nl/comment/15162357
American here.
They’re like any other bully.
Break their nose.
“failed foreign economies”
Lol. Lmao, even.
Absolute clown.
Think of it on the flipside. If I make a website, I don’t control who accesses it, and if I run ads or something, figuring out where that revenue is coming from is quite difficult. It can be done, but if I have to pay taxes to a hundred different countries, that’s quite the burden.
I don’t know how DSTs work in practice, but ideally we’d just discourage ads in general. Paying taxes on actual transactions (sub fees and whatnot) is easy, and ads suck.
figuring out where that revenue is coming from is quite difficult.
Since all countries have long traditions in requiring that from a business, it doesn’t matter if it’s difficult or not.
It den essentially requires user tracking, no? Or some complex IP-based guesswork?
Maybe it’s tractable for larger businesses, I’m more thinking of smaller players who don’t have billions in revenue.
I think the world would be a better place if we collectively perma-banned all American digital services (while helping NGOs/open source projects relocate their infrastructure and legal organisations out of the US).
There would be a lot more competition, a wider variety of product offerings, more regional customisation, a bigger focus on long tail services.
It would be messy at first, but that’s the nature of a transition from an oligarch model to a competitive model.
While what I am saying may sound like a pipe dream or pettyness, but from my perspective everything starts from a small step.
And if you don’t live in the US (but are unfortunately impacted by their internal politics), you do have to take a more sober attitude towards their claimed commitment to democracy, free markets and rule of law.
I would argue the goal should be actually permanently getting rid of American technology services as opposed to getting a deal.
By this point American business leaders (not only in tech) have decisively proven that they are not any better than say russian oligarchs; a group of corrupt criminals who will happily support authoritarianism as long as they get to keep their businesses interests.
Plus allowing another countries tech to be embedded into government, military, and any other critical operations is an omnipresent national security risk. Doesn’t matter if they’re an ally.
Democracies should be run on 100% open source. The developed world could collectively employ less engineers than big tech and I am certain they could produce a better ecosystem of services that would also provide wide reaching benefits to every other economy, and they could do it cheaper than big tech. It’s easy to beat private companies that must enshittify to achieve constant profit growth.
Ugh. So bored reading all these words without any mention of raping the populace for profits.
He didn’t say anything about regulating them.
Tax revenue is small fry compared to the harm they can (and do?) cause.
Sort of except the fact that he wants to be a dictator. Tariffs require no approval from Congress and it’s the only peaceful offensive weapon he has at his disposal.
He knows better (at least let’s hope he does) than to send troops anywhere for 90 days.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
No wait, sorry.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
From the article:
Trump’s opposition to DSTs is not new: the Biden administration felt they disproportionately targeted US businesses and threatened 25 percent tariffs if they were not removed.
“disproportionately targeted US businesses”
You want to have a monopoly, well guess what…
Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro has been charged in connection with an alleged coup plot to overturn the results of the 2022 election and keep his opponent from taking power, according to documents filed by prosecutors Tuesday evening.
I mean, technically, we have a federal republic.
While there is supposed to be a division of powers, because it was combined with the first past the post system, it becomes a split political mess, because the combinatorics virtually guaranteed this outcome at some point.
Additionally, instead of a parliamentary republic, just like Brazil, we have the presidential system, which leads to the same problems you guys got with Bolsanaro. Quite literally everything you hear in the media and by our government regarding democracy is and has been propaganda. States have some democratic processes, but for the large part that’s not even true.
The founding fathers were of course aware of all this. They just figured it was useful while separating from Britain and establishing the country, and over time it would better itself because enlightened individuals would remain in power dedicated towards “the more perfect Republic.”
Obviously that didn’t happen and here we are.
where laws work more strictly
That’s never been the case. If anything we’ve been a major source of corruption on the world and particularly for South America for the last 150-200 years.
Switch to open source everywhere, especially in government systems
Drop Microsoft, block meta, Google, and just get rid of Amazon
It would probably take decades to unplug older systems but with a gradual approach we could probably get rid of most of it quite fast.
I wonder how much public money is wasted in Microsoft crapware, but if any of it would be redirected to open source fundings (which is actual common good) it may be a huge deal.
Much of the software, especially stuff that the likes of Microsoft provide, already exists, and is already in use. In fact plenty of local administrations have been railing against the EU commission and their insistence on .docx and stuff.
OTOH it’s not trivial to implement, not in the software sense but the institutional one: It doesn’t matter that software that can map complex administrative workflows already exists, you still have to take that stuff and build whatever workflow some agency uses into it.
You also don’t need your own servers, there’s public law hosting providers around. E.g. northern German states founded dataport, if you’re a municipality there it’s a no-brainer to get your software and your cloud, consulting, everything, from them. It’s going to be better than anything you could come up with because you’re not the first municipality to contract with them.
The EU established an ACI (Anti-cooersion instrument) in 2023 that would be devastating to US interests.
Included in their response would be the suspension of all US intellectual property rights in Europe.