That's a bit misleading.
Make no mistake, current US tariffs are UNIVERSAL. Not specific to e.g. chicken or automobiles or purebred horses. They cover absolutely everything.
While you may see 38% or more tariff on chocolate, chocolate export to the EU from the US is hardly an important issue. And for dairy products, the tariff is a fixed euro amount per weight, not %.
I wasn't touching the first two categories anyway, tariffs or no tariffs.
First one because I don't understand why i should risk a milk based product that has traveled for months across an ocean. Or even from another EU country, when I can buy stuff made in a 200 km radius around me.
Second one because afaik it's legal to call "chocolate" something that does not contain any actual cocoa in the US.
> Second one because afaik it's legal to call "chocolate" something that does not contain any actual cocoa in the US.
Well, no. It cannot be called "chocolate" if it is something that consumers would expect to be made from actual chocolate. However, it can contain the term "chocolate" if cocoa or another cacao product is the sole source of its chocolate flavor, and as long as consumers have a pre-established understanding that it is likely to not be made from chocolate. For example, people generally understand that chocolate cake is likely made with cocoa, not chocolate, and so it can be labeled "chocolate cake". If there is no such general understanding, the product must be labeled "chocolate flavored".
(See the US FDA CPG Sec 515.800, "Labeling of Products Purporting to be 'Chocolate' or 'Chocolate Flavored'")
Now if we could just get them to stop calling chocolate products with dairy in them "dark" (I'm looking at you, Hershey...)
Cheese is the obvious one here. I can get a variety of foreign cheeses even at my local big-box grocery. Much better options than most domestically produced cheese.
Irish/Finnish butter (Kerrygold/Finlandia) is also fairly popular here.
If properly refrigerated, milk can last for months especially if pasteurized.
You can also evaporate milk and it will last nearly forever unrefrigerated if kept dry
> But why take the risk when you can have fresh?
> Is that still milk?
Some people just find it things like evaporated milk convenient. e.g, Coffee drinkers who don't want to bother with refrigerating the cream, so they use the powdered stuff.
In the case of European butters/cheeses, they just taste despite the higher cost.
I doubt anyone would actually prefer American butter, except maybe Americans, but it could be the American producers can make it more cheaply.
> Coffee drinkers who don't want to bother with refrigerating the cream, so they use the powdered stuff.
Infidels! Coffee is the black as night stuff! The rest is just kiddy drinks!
When I say milk, I'm talking about drinking it as-is.
> In the case of European butters/cheeses, they just taste despite the higher cost.
Ok but I'm European. My favourite butter - with taste - is manufactured 124 km away from me :)
It's nothing fancy, just butter. Not even expensive. Maybe 10% more than the average local butter.
This subthread started with the post that said the EU is taxing US dairy and chocolate products prohibitively.
Careful: The rate mentioned for alcoholic beverages (and confectionery) may include Excise Duty.
Excise Duty usually have the non-discriminatory aspect of VAT : they’re also applied on local production.
So strange to take VAT into account when it's not discriminating between local or import. By that logic the US has a 5-10% tariff on everything too since we have sales tax in like 47 states.
The thinking may be that the asymmetry in taxes itself cause a trade imbalance. What can the country do with the extra tax money they receive compared to the lower tax country? They can spend it to fund infrastructure, goods, and jobs inside their own borders.
Yes, we're on the same page I think. For context, this thread was originally about to what extent VAT is comparable to tariffs. For example, say country A has a end-consumer tax of 20% and country B has one of 10%, and neither has tariffs or other trade barriers. On the surface, we might expect country B to have a trade surplus due to having comparatively cheaper exports. But what if they instead they have a deficit?
Country A is less dependent on B than the other way around, and they are able to enrich their country with the extra tax revenue. Maybe they even use this tax revenue to invest or incentivize what's needed to become even less dependant on country B. Now suppose country B increases their tariff until the trade balance is zero. In this scenario, all country B is really doing is increasing their own tax revenue to match that of country A.
Ok. Taking this argument completely in good faith, does it follow that they think no country should be allowed to have any sales tax? Or that it’s an act of economic oppression for any country to have a higher sales tax than our country does? I’m just confused, do they propose every country should abolish all their sales taxes to appease this strange and pretty novel point of view.
I feel like Trump or whoever is running this import tax show has lost the plot on what they’re trying to accomplish.
I don't know if anyone's necessarily saying that. I think it's a matter of "if tax differences cause trade imbalances, then increasing tariffs by the other side is basically a fair response, since it is also a tax."
Interesting that people are downvoting heavily those information. If reality does not match our view of the World, well, let's ignore reality. The truth is that EU kept higher tariffs on US goods than the other way, Trump is changing that and there is an outcry, because it was Trump who did that. If that was Kamala, nobody would even notice.
