Comment by repolfx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by repolfx | Hacker News Reader

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It depends very much on the definition of "walk away".

Europeans use America-only firms all the time and can easily make cross border payments. There aren't really robust ways to stop US firms selling to the EU over the internet especially for services, which are excluded from tariffs via GATT.

Whilst I don't think we'll see established firms "walk away" in the sense of closing down their EU offices, I think it's extremely likely that the next generation of startups will simply never choose to open offices in the EU to begin with. Sort of like how many companies ignore the Chinese market today because the problems that come with it offset the appeal of a large (much, much more captive) market.

> There aren't really robust ways to stop US firms selling to the EU over the internet especially for services, which are excluded from tariffs via GATT.

It’s rather easy to seize transfers made to foreign companies in violation of a local law. So while that foreign company then wouldn’t have to have a presence in the EU, it also couldn’t receive payments from EU companies or customers.

Much the same way the US will complain if you transfer funds out of the US to terrorists or drug lords or whoever is politically unfavourable today.

There are really robust ways of stopping American countries from selling to EU citizens. Financial transactions are easily tracked and blocked. So are websites. If nothing works, then the EU can stop trading and kick American payment companies out.

There was an implicit assumption in my post that the EU wouldn't go full totalitarian and establish a new iron curtain.

Yes, if it is willing to go down that route it can seal off people from America entirely. But the fact that people are even seriously proposing this is the best argument for Brexit yet.

Or maybe more likely just wait until they have an established and successful business in the USA first and only then expand to Europe if it makes sense.

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