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I did not argue that germans are stupid, you did not argue that germans are stupid, i did argue that you are an asshole. I stand by that. You replied
"german lobbyists"
to the question
"Tariff = lose-lose is an oversimplification. For example the EU's 10% tariff on cars. Is the EU also too stupid to realize that tariff = bad or perhaps they think the protection it offers to domestic auto companies outweighs any negatives to their consumers? Clearly the EU thought it was "good" to have a tariff against US cars but if a US tariff against EU cars is automatically bad then I'd like to hear some reasoning for the discrepancy."
One of the ways to understand your reply is to say nto the EU is too stupid to realize that tariff = bad, but the german lobbyists are too stupid. YOu could have simply stated that this tariff is usefull to the euorpean car industry and the EU is too stupid to stand up to them for the sake of their population. That would have been a reasonable point and we would have agreed and moved on. insterad you had to make a bullshit answer to a valid question based on the argumentation you had made before. Instead you made a supid 2 word reply to shut the whole thing down and when i asked you to explain your post you doubled down by making the most non explanatory reply that left every thing you could have meant especially unsaid.
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United States43232 Posts
Everyone knows that the lobbyist lobbies for the good of their cause and not the good of the population. That's more or less what lobbying is, it's why lobbyists exist. If I blame lobbyists then I am blaming a special interest pushing their own agenda.
You deliberately chose to misinterpret my post about lobbying in a way that offended you. I stand by my response, it was well crafted and concise. You jumped to "Germans are stupid" which was a ridiculous leap to make. I cleanly dismissed your attempt to argue about whether Germans are stupid by saying that I don't know why you jumped to that when nothing I said about lobbyists implied that.
But you're so desperate to get offended that you couldn't accept the dismissal. You leaped into an argument that didn't exist and missed the ground when I refused to engage you on it. Everything since then has been an attempt by you to double down on finding that argument.
The response to BlackJack’s question about why a car tariff that hurts EU residents exists is lobbying. That’s the whole response. Nobody needs to be stupid. Industry rationally hires lobbyists, lobbyists rationally lobby for their industry, politicians rationally give the lobbyists what they want, the people harmed don’t have a seat at the table.
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I find it fascinating that Europeans are being painted as genius negotiators as compared to China and the US when the facts bare a much more bleak picture for EU.
These "technocrats who outplayed Trump" have been fucking up and dropping the ball consistently for 40 years, we went from being on par with the US or better when it comes to GDP until about 2010 to US overtaking us and never looking back after.
We went from China being where we have all of our undesirable low level manufacturing to them stealing all of our IP and manufacturing know how and then using the money they gained from all of this to buy our strategic ports and a bunch of important companies.
We fucked up by appeasing Putin for 20 years only for this to result in Ukrainians dying and being invaded, first in 2014 where EU did fuck all which enabled Putin to do what he did in 2022. But I'm sure appeasing Trump instead of punishing his idiotic bullshit will be the right call.
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %.
What both KwarK and Velr are having trouble understanding is that the argument is not "Capitalism bad" but "Capitalism bad for people who can't fight back", thus the Congo and chicken argument, that's why China is buying shit all over Africa, that's why they are building highways all over Europe and Asia.
Trump's tariffs might be bad for the US, but they are, as conceded by KwarK previously after much arguing also bad for the EU, and Trump doesn't care, and Trump his supporters, not just in the US but all over the world will present that as a win.
EU is failing at being good at capitalism and China and US are eating our lunch. And this is not in the way "we should exploit our workers more", it's in the "we should use our leverage and stop being pushovers" way.
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I am not getting offended at all by the topics you bring to the discussion. I am criticizing you on the way you post. It is currently my number one topic because it happens over and over and over and as a mod I expect you to do better. I know you do not believe Germans are stupid I wanted to understand your two word answer because the rest of the argument you made against jankisa has been so awful. That you answered in the most passive aggressive shit posting way possible is on brand. Calling you out on it here or in the Feedback thread has not resulted in any more understanding from you and it does not seem like your behavior will ever change.
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On July 30 2025 10:26 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2025 10:20 GreenHorizons wrote:
To just take one small aspect of the damage Trump/Biden has done, there isn't a viable plan from the opposition party for women to regain their bodily autonomy in our lifetimes.
Think about that. People were born with a right that they lost under a Democrat president and neither of the two parties they are supposed to vote for is offering a viable path to getting that right back before it's irrelevant for them personally.
They'd be righteous to demand that right back with a gun pointed at anyone denying it to them. What does the political party of the current president have to do with SCOTUS making that ruling?
Biden had the power to add to the court or other activism kinda things to torpedo it. We can discuss whether that would have been a good idea, but Biden did have tools in his toolbox. There were things to be done. Democrat leadership is still making sure to sip their tea with their pinky extended while republicans are putting war paint on.
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United States43232 Posts
On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
What both KwarK and Velr are having trouble understanding is that the argument is not "Capitalism bad" but "Capitalism bad for people who can't fight back", thus the Kongo and chicken argument, that's why China is buying shit all over Africa, that's why they are building highways all over Europe and Asia.
That's not any part of this argument. It's a discussion about tariffs between the EU and US. The Congo isn't involved. Capitalism isn't about free trade, it's about who owns the means of production. Capitalism isn't involved, capitalism and free trade are completely different subjects, capitalists can and frequently do engage in protectionism and state owned businesses can compete without tariffs. I don't know who you're talking to about capitalist chickens in the Congo but it's not me or Velr.
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I can see the selective reading comprehension is strong, Broetchenholer mentioned the Capitalism doing protectionism and congolese chickens, Velr made a comment how we are just "capitalism bad" guys which I addressed in a previous and now this comment.
It's very irritating that you are taking turns between being all about precise language and extremely obtuse when it comes to reading what others write.
It makes you look like a small, petty debatelord, which, if it's intentional, kudos, spot on.
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On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %.
What would have been a successful outcome of the negotiations in your opinion?
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Northern Ireland26036 Posts
Could you have more economic growth without tariffs?
If so, it would seem entirely relevant.
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On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
I find it fascinating that Europeans are being painted as genius negotiators as compared to China and the US when the facts bare a much more bleak picture for EU.
These "technocrats who outplayed Trump" have been fucking up and dropping the ball consistently for 40 years, we went from being on par with the US or better when it comes to GDP until about 2010 to US overtaking us and never looking back after.
We went from China being where we have all of our undesirable low level manufacturing to them stealing all of our IP and manufacturing know how and then using the money they gained from all of this to buy our strategic ports and a bunch of important companies.
We fucked up by appeasing Putin for 20 years only for this to result in Ukrainians dying and being invaded, first in 2014 where EU did fuck all which enabled Putin to do what he did in 2022. But I'm sure appeasing Trump instead of punishing his idiotic bullshit will be the right call.
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %.
What both KwarK and Velr are having trouble understanding is that the argument is not "Capitalism bad" but "Capitalism bad for people who can't fight back", thus the Congo and chicken argument, that's why China is buying shit all over Africa, that's why they are building highways all over Europe and Asia.
Trump's tariffs might be bad for the US, but they are, as conceded by KwarK previously after much arguing also bad for the EU, and Trump doesn't care, and Trump his supporters, not just in the US but all over the world will present that as a win.
EU is failing at being good at capitalism and China and US are eating our lunch. And this is not in the way "we should exploit our workers more", it's in the "we should use our leverage and stop being pushovers" way.
There is no leverage.
The US intends to use tariff, one way or another, to renegotiate the trades and cooperation. E.g. more open trade for some products or deter selling arms to China/Russia.
Pretty much nobody in Asia even bother covering EU potential retaliation tariff, because China is already beginning their cheap dump into the EU and guess what, EU can't profit off suing them as easily as US big corps.
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On July 31 2025 05:26 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %. What would have been a successful outcome of the negotiations in your opinion?
A hard line EU approach would be to have our base stance be to start taxing digital services in EU to the same amounts that Trump taxes US citizens with tariffs, tit for tat.
If Trump is OK with that, OK, EU gets more revenue, companies pay a bit more for digital service (AWS, MS cloud, banking) and there is pressure for EU companies to develop and offer alternatives to EU companies that use them.
When Trump caves because he is, after all, deeply entangled with corporate interests a free trade deal where tariffs for both sides get reduced to 0 (as was proposed early on) would be ideal.
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On July 31 2025 17:17 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 05:26 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %. What would have been a successful outcome of the negotiations in your opinion? A hard line EU approach would be to have our base stance be to start taxing digital services in EU to the same amounts that Trump taxes US citizens with tariffs, tit for tat. If Trump is OK with that, OK, EU gets more revenue, companies pay a bit more for digital service (AWS, MS cloud, banking) and there is pressure for EU companies to develop and offer alternatives to EU companies that use them. When Trump caves because he is, after all, deeply entangled with corporate interests a free trade deal where tariffs for both sides get reduced to 0 (as was proposed early on) would be ideal.
I am a bit confused by this. Couldn't we just increase taxes on digital services if we wanted to?
I mean, isn't the argument here the same as with the tariffs, i.e. doing this would decrease investment and growth of a sector that is currently attracting some of the highest investments and growth worldwide? As I understand it, the digital transition is one of the EU's central growth pillars, and is expected to be a huge driver of prosperity. Why mess with that in a pissing contest with Trump?
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EU won't tariff 'services' because this would make Trump angry.
He clearly has no idea how dominant the US services are in Europe, how they make bajillions, and killing all competition by just stomping them with their rotten stump of a foot.
You basicly can't pay for hotels, flights, stuff from the internet.. without Visa, Mastercard or PayPal.
They avoid taxes throught teh EU, Headquarter in Ireland or Luxembourg, transfer all local earnings as "Licence fee" and swoosh the money is gone.. no local company profited and money is thus extraced from the EU to the US.
If you want to do gardening or electrical installations as a business you need:
3 Years of training +
Master's education
15-25.000€ in down payment to run a limited company
5000€ in fees to your profession's association to get put on the ledger of professionals
Your private customers will pay 19% in revenue tax on your billed costs, you will pay 15% of tax on profits as a company and anywhere from 0 to 45% tax on moving that money over to your private account.
Your wages cost 20-30% more than the gross payment listed, and your employees will also have to shed 30% of that to get to their net pay. And you need to to provide them with Training courses and worker's representation.
Same with entertainment.. EU copyright laws are paid for by europeans.. to protect mostly US Entertainment IP. from the greedy pirates that want to have them for free.
Disney paid 50€ on 1M € in Taxes. And their office was litteraly in an multi office complex, marked by some painters tape saying "Disney Inc. Europe"
If somebody is dryfucking money out of an economic region.. it's the US Service and Entertainment industry.
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On July 31 2025 18:40 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 17:17 Jankisa wrote:On July 31 2025 05:26 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %. What would have been a successful outcome of the negotiations in your opinion? A hard line EU approach would be to have our base stance be to start taxing digital services in EU to the same amounts that Trump taxes US citizens with tariffs, tit for tat. If Trump is OK with that, OK, EU gets more revenue, companies pay a bit more for digital service (AWS, MS cloud, banking) and there is pressure for EU companies to develop and offer alternatives to EU companies that use them. When Trump caves because he is, after all, deeply entangled with corporate interests a free trade deal where tariffs for both sides get reduced to 0 (as was proposed early on) would be ideal. I am a bit confused by this. Couldn't we just increase taxes on digital services if we wanted to? I mean, isn't the argument here the same as with the tariffs, i.e. doing this would decrease investment and growth of a sector that is currently attracting some of the highest investments and growth worldwide? As I understand it, the digital transition is one of the EU's central growth pillars, and is expected to be a huge driver of prosperity. Why mess with that in a pissing contest with Trump?
I am for raising taxes on "international" companies making huge profits in the EU and paying no taxes on it because for some reason the good they provide is intangible to the boomer legislature and the headqarter is somewhere else. I would want that to happen no matter what DJT does. But if the EU is trying to negotiate with him to not be hit with a tariff, i would have loved if that tax was the bargaining chip because if DJT then does not do tariffs because Zuckerberg sucks him off, no tariff and if he does the tariff we at least get some fairness into taxing facebook for the bullshit they are doing. It would have been better then tariffing goods because goods raise inflation, taxing the ad income of facebook does not. But of course the devil is in the details and it could also be possible that such a tax would backfire because it again would hit companies we deem useful and not the ones we believe it should target. Like facebook.
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On July 31 2025 19:27 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 18:40 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 31 2025 17:17 Jankisa wrote:On July 31 2025 05:26 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %. What would have been a successful outcome of the negotiations in your opinion? A hard line EU approach would be to have our base stance be to start taxing digital services in EU to the same amounts that Trump taxes US citizens with tariffs, tit for tat. If Trump is OK with that, OK, EU gets more revenue, companies pay a bit more for digital service (AWS, MS cloud, banking) and there is pressure for EU companies to develop and offer alternatives to EU companies that use them. When Trump caves because he is, after all, deeply entangled with corporate interests a free trade deal where tariffs for both sides get reduced to 0 (as was proposed early on) would be ideal. I am a bit confused by this. Couldn't we just increase taxes on digital services if we wanted to? I mean, isn't the argument here the same as with the tariffs, i.e. doing this would decrease investment and growth of a sector that is currently attracting some of the highest investments and growth worldwide? As I understand it, the digital transition is one of the EU's central growth pillars, and is expected to be a huge driver of prosperity. Why mess with that in a pissing contest with Trump? I am for raising taxes on "international" companies making huge profits in the EU and paying no taxes on it because for some reason the good they provide is intangible to the boomer legislature and the headqarter is somewhere else. I would want that to happen no matter what DJT does. But if the EU is trying to negotiate with him to not be hit with a tariff, i would have loved if that tax was the bargaining chip because if DJT then does not do tariffs because Zuckerberg sucks him off, no tariff and if he does the tariff we at least get some fairness into taxing facebook for the bullshit they are doing. It would have been better then tariffing goods because goods raise inflation, taxing the ad income of facebook does not. But of course the devil is in the details and it could also be possible that such a tax would backfire because it again would hit companies we deem useful and not the ones we believe it should target. Like facebook.
The argument for increasing taxes is the same as with the tariffs (because it's effectively the same thing). A tit for tat tariff/tax increase makes it harder to do business so economic activity goes down which makes growth go down, which makes people lose their jobs. You can target facebook if you like or whiskey from Kentucky. The end result is the same since Trump's reciprocal tariff would be coming.
You guys are arguing for a targeted tariff (on facebook or whatever) by calling it a tax on digital services. Effectively you just want the EU to take China's tit for tat approach. If you want to argue this, it would be good if you actually argued how this would be better for the EU.
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On July 31 2025 19:39 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 19:27 Broetchenholer wrote:On July 31 2025 18:40 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 31 2025 17:17 Jankisa wrote:On July 31 2025 05:26 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 31 2025 00:31 Jankisa wrote:
The analogy of "Trump is shooting himself and threatening others and there is nothing to be done" is just extremely misguided, he can be pressured, every time someone from the Corporate world comes to him they walk out with exceptions and concessions, god forbid that EU decided to use it's leverage of being the biggest market in the world in order to put actual pressure on these tech and other companies so they can do the same to Trump, nah, much better to just bow down and be happy with negotiating him down from 25 % to 15 % when we started the year at 2 %. What would have been a successful outcome of the negotiations in your opinion? A hard line EU approach would be to have our base stance be to start taxing digital services in EU to the same amounts that Trump taxes US citizens with tariffs, tit for tat. If Trump is OK with that, OK, EU gets more revenue, companies pay a bit more for digital service (AWS, MS cloud, banking) and there is pressure for EU companies to develop and offer alternatives to EU companies that use them. When Trump caves because he is, after all, deeply entangled with corporate interests a free trade deal where tariffs for both sides get reduced to 0 (as was proposed early on) would be ideal. I am a bit confused by this. Couldn't we just increase taxes on digital services if we wanted to? I mean, isn't the argument here the same as with the tariffs, i.e. doing this would decrease investment and growth of a sector that is currently attracting some of the highest investments and growth worldwide? As I understand it, the digital transition is one of the EU's central growth pillars, and is expected to be a huge driver of prosperity. Why mess with that in a pissing contest with Trump? I am for raising taxes on "international" companies making huge profits in the EU and paying no taxes on it because for some reason the good they provide is intangible to the boomer legislature and the headqarter is somewhere else. I would want that to happen no matter what DJT does. But if the EU is trying to negotiate with him to not be hit with a tariff, i would have loved if that tax was the bargaining chip because if DJT then does not do tariffs because Zuckerberg sucks him off, no tariff and if he does the tariff we at least get some fairness into taxing facebook for the bullshit they are doing. It would have been better then tariffing goods because goods raise inflation, taxing the ad income of facebook does not. But of course the devil is in the details and it could also be possible that such a tax would backfire because it again would hit companies we deem useful and not the ones we believe it should target. Like facebook. The argument for increasing taxes is the same as with the tariffs (because it's effectively the same thing). A tit for tat tariff/tax increase makes it harder to do business so economic activity goes down which makes growth go down, which makes people lose their jobs. You can target facebook if you like or whiskey from Kentucky. The end result is the same since Trump's reciprocal tariff would be coming. You guys are arguing for a targeted tariff (on facebook or whatever) by calling it a tax on digital services. Effectively you just want the EU to take China's tit for tat approach. If you want to argue this, it would be good if you actually argued how this would be better for the EU.
I am not the person arguing in favor of tit for tat. I would prefer to have no tariffs between the US and EU. I just understand the frustration of seeing the bully come up to the EU and saying give me your export income and the EU responds with yes sir and also have some investments. Also, you look very attractive right now.
I cannot say if it had been better to try to play hardball with him to get rid of it all together, who knows, maybe we could have actually scared him into lowering tariffs. And i think a pretty good approach for that would have been the digital service tax for foreign countries because it combines my desire to tax those companies with my desire for not giving the man what he wants. But i would not have any idea if this would have worked on him.
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The problem with playing hardball is that Trump doesn't care about tanking the us economy. He had to pay like a 23 billion dollar bailout to save the agriculture sector as a result of his trade war with China during his first term and he went right back to another US-China trade war, China played hardball and he just went higher and higher.
India just got a 'deal' for 25%.
I get the frustration, and I would have been happier with a united global counter to really pressure the US but that's rarely how the world works.
You can look at it as if the EU got humiliated or you can read past the sensational headlines and see that they got the tariffs down to 15% in exchange for giving up nothing, since both the investments and energy sales seem to be complete hot air the more information comes out, both are EU 'promises' over private sector spending that the EU has no control over.
As for the taxing services, I would love if we could switch to a system where a company is taxed by the countries they operate in for the revenue gained from said operation rather then taxed by whatever random country they have a fake HQ in and where they pretend to not actually earn any money due to whatever bullshit financial contraction their accountants thought up.
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EPT
