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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

Currently it's devolving into tariffs on everything. Like Europe's 25% tariff on Harley motorcycles. They're getting hit on both ends too because their inputs are also hit (steel being the big one). Tariff in and tariff out, it's ridiculous.

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Actually the tariff is 31%. An increase of 25% over the existing 6% tariff. If Europe is so concerned about tariffs, then why did they have a 6% tariff in the first place? That’s the point of this “trade war” — countries already have tariffs. It’s disingenuous to complain about American tariffs when the EU has built their protectionist model around doing just that.

France has a bunch of “protected” industries and they have the nerve to complain when others retaliate?

For the record, I am opposed to all tariffs and subsidies. But framing this as a Trump-caused issue is intellectually dishonest. He’s just attacking the status quo (wrongly or rightly.)

We're punishing Canada who has some of the most open markets in the world. Like top ten lowest tariff rates. Don't try to pretend there's any rhyme or reason to this, it's intellectually dishonest.

The US charges plenty of high tariffs in return, it's not like the US doesn't protect industries. The EU laid these on in response to Trump protecting the domestic steel and aluminum industry (notionally for national security reasons, which is a joke).

Why was there a 6% tariff on motorcycles to begin with? That tax wasn’t in response to Trump. That tax was to protect EU industry which is exactly the problem. The EU has long engaged in protectionism — when the US does the same, somehow that’s a scandal? Let’s be intellectually consistent here. All tariffs are bad except in the case of dumping.

And the US has 25% import duty on trucks, why do they have that to begin with? You can play that back-and-forth game quite a bit.

I'd be a bit more sympathetic if the US government had asked the EU to remove duties before creating new ones, but that doesn't appear to be the case. And at the same time people complain that it's totally unfair that the Canadians seek to limit imports of some goods from the US...

> 25% import duty on trucks

Commonly known as the "Chicken Tax", this was imposed by LBJ in response to French & German duties on imported chicken meat. Congress lumped light trucks into the bill because LBJ wanted the support of the UAW, who didn't like the importation of the VW Type 2 pickup as well as Japanese utility vehicles.

At the moment, the tax on light trucks is the only remaining part of this bill. And it's pretty toothless as Honda is now building trucks in Alabama, and Ford/GM are building fullsize trucks in Canada & Mexico (which don't get taxed because of NAFTA) yet somehow get classified as domestics.

>Why was there a 6% tariff

I'm not sure the exact details but it was all set in Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), spanning from 1986 to 1994 and embracing 123 countries. And then I guess people kind of forgot about it. EU's trade weighted average MFN tariff was 2.3% for non-agricultural products (in 2013) and no one seemed particularly bothered about it till now.

Probably for similar reasons the US charges a 2.4% tariff (on a muuuuch higher dollar value of motorcycles since Harley is about the only US motorcycle maker).

The US has long engaged in protectionism as well - do a search for US protectionism if you think the US is somehow unfairly treated in this respect and need a list. For a long time the consensus has been that lower barriers are better for everyone, until Trump unilaterally ripped up several free trade agreements and declared (trade) war on the world.

This is a dangerous escalation from Trump which will lead to a global trade war and recession at the very least.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_...

Can't respond to the person below you, so I'll have to do it here - the EU doesn't actually make many motorcycles, and people who buy them don't want a harley - they want something fast and reliable, not loud and showy.

I would suspect it's a general 6% tarriff on things that haven't been included in a trade deal before, and thanks to WTO rules it'll be the same for Japanese motorbikes as well.

That's what I would've thought too, but in 2017 Harley sold 140k bikes in the US and 40k in Europe. So probably a fraction of the Japanese brands, but definitely a significant portion of Harley's business.

http://investor.harley-davidson.com/our-company/motorcycle-r...

Attacking the status quo has negative consequences. Whatever the intellectual basis for that may be, there is a price to be paid.

Most of the world has been reducing tariffs and bringing in free trade agreements like NAFTA, the EU single market, the almost passed Trans-Pacific Partnership and so on. Trump is kind of unique in recent times going the other way.

Can you really not see the difference between the reasonable protectionism practiced by every country and the current trade war?

There is no such thing as “reasonable protectionism” unless you are dealing with dumping. Harley could hardly be accused of dumping. So why a 6% tariff in the first place? EU clothing tariffs already average 12% in many other categories it ranges from 4-36%.

So is the EU protecting nearly every industry? Isn’t that the point of this “trade war” — the EU has been applying tariffs to almost everything for a long time. Doesn’t the US have a right to retaliate?

French milk is already better than most American milk, yet France puts a 36% tax on dairy imports in addition to heavily subsidizing dairy. So the effective tariff is much higher. And European consumers end up losing because they have to spend more of their money on dairy — all to protect a fairly small industry when measured as a percentage of GDP. Yet every time reforms are attempted, farmers literally riot.

Why should a country accept their goods being taxed without being able to respond in kind?

This is tit-for-tat to be sure, but the tit didn’t start with the Trump tariffs.

Huh? It's disingenuous to look at only one one side of the equation. The US imposes its own share of tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers. Some of which (mainly for certain agricultural products) are high enough to all but eliminate imports of them altogether. Peanuts, raw tobacco, and sugar are examples of American industries that have benefited from aggressive protectionist policies for decades.

Existing trade agreements have recognized this; it's not something that the EU has unilaterally imposed in recent years. The average EU tariff on American goods is under 3 percent.[0] More importantly, the average tariff--for both the EU and the rest of the world--have been steadily declining.[1] That was the trend. The administration's recent trade policy upends that trend for no real purpose.

If the goal is to see tariffs lowered and barriers removed--one that I heartily support--you don't undertake a policy that will spur the opposite. You sit down at the negotiating table like adults and hammer out a trade deal. Which is a lot harder than it sounds, because every tariff of your own that you can use as leverage in the deal has its own domestic supporters. Many of whom are politically well-connected. It's not surprising then, that the administration chose to pursue a simpler (albeit inherently flawed) approach.

0. https://www.export.gov/article?id=European-union-Import-Tari...

1. http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/07/news/economy/trump-tariffs-t...

The tit didn't start with the Trump tariffs, but Trump also effectively stopped TTIP negotiations, and TTIP would lower trade barriers between US and the EU. This was a prelude to the current trade war with the EU. Which is very unhelpful, he should just concentrate on China.

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