The US is preparing to bring down on Europe and Asia "retaliation"
The flagship of the American business press, which boasts excellent sources in Washington's highest offices, The Wall Street Journal reports that the US is preparing for the introduction of measures of economic impact against a whole group of countries who have encroached on the U.S. financial flows. The geographic scope affected by future measures Washington economic retribution is impressive in its scope: the European Union (General), Austria, Brazil, Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Turkey and even Britain.
Guilty for all of these countries before the administration of Donald trump? All they are going to impose taxes against American Internet giants that got used to a privilege, which stand guard over American politics. This privilege is to earn money worldwide with little to pay taxes. The amount of taxation which now dream of politics from Paris to Rio de Janeiro and from Jakarta to Rome, it is absolutely astronomical, but under the gun they have companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. However, in order to defend their unwritten privileges, even Donald trump (who himself is a victim of the actions of the owners of these companies are obviously supporting Joe Biden) seriously ready to quarrel even with close allies such as Britain, India or Brazil, not to mention the European Union.
The crux of the problem: European and not only European policies indicate that existing schemes of work companies this kind of enable them to record their earnings in the accounting statements of the countries with the lowest taxation, no matter in what country they really gave their services. In theory this scheme can benefit any company, but historically, that the main beneficiaries of such schemes are, precisely, US companies (with their taxes in the States themselves paying more or less regularly). The problem to such an extent sharp and "American" that a special tax directed against such "optimizers" received the informal name GAFA international tax — "a tax on Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple". It is significant that this fact is used by critics of new taxes as proof that it is, in fact, an element of anti-American policies.
If you look at official estimates of the amounts to be collected, for example, in France (a total of 500 million euros per year), it may seem that happens a storm in a teacup and that it is impossible to imagine a full-fledged trade war with mutual tariffs on tens of billions of dollars and a cooling of relations at the diplomatic level because of such trifles. But it's not the amount (which is likely greatly underestimated and comes from the original, the microscopic rate of three per cent in the case of France), and in principle. In 2019, the Minister of economy of France Bruno Le Mayor was sharply responded to criticism of this "anti-American tax" statements that "France is a sovereign country, its decisions on tax issues sovereign and remain sovereign."
In fact, from a formal point of view, Monsieur Le Mayor a hundred percent right, but Washington and he not only he shows that formal rights have nothing to do with reality, which runs exclusively the right of the strongest. "Digital tax" — a precedent for the demonstration of real sovereignty, and it is because of this aspect, even trump is ready to go for the economic conflict for the interests of the companies who genuinely hate him and try to help Biden. It is a matter of principle, and the principle "America has a right to everything" is absolutely sacred to all American presidents, regardless of political orientation.
In the end, the US has already imposed sanctions against the International criminal court in the Hague for investigation of war crimes of the us military. According to Deutsche Welle: "According to the decree of trump, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. assets of persons identified as involved in trials of the International criminal court over American employees, will be blocked. Such persons will also prohibit the allocation of money. In addition, they and members of their families will be denied entry into the United States."
Against this background, threats to France and introduce protective tariffs against French wine, cheese and luxury goods is quite an ordinary event. The Wall Street Journal recalls that last year the threat of such action was enough to force France to specifically delay the introduction of the tax until the end of 2020. However, now the situation has changed: the EU and other countries need money to deal with the economic consequences of coronavirus, and the authority of the United States in the international arena has fallen, not to mention the fact that now the tax is almost ready to enter the European Union as a whole, as well as a lot of other countries. As a result, Washington may be in a situation where the protection of American Internet giants require the actual conduct of economic warfare with the rest of the world, or at least the greater part of it. If need be, most likely, Washington will do it, but such a policy is quite high price.
Commenting on the sanctions of the United States against the International criminal court in the Hague, Chinese state newspaper Global Times noted: "the United States has violated international rules and imposed sanctions on other countries, forcing them to carry out the orders of Washington. This has created a serious threat to world order and security. Washington was so unscrupulous that people are joking that the next target of the sanctions will be a God, because Washington may think that God is not properly blessed America. Through its hegemonic thinking States believe that they can order each country and organization to act in its sole discretion. But Washington knows that (there are) less willing to obey his orders."
It is significant that in an economic sense at this time, Trump will have to find some much more serious measures of influence. The fact that the EU is going to create another precedent demonstration of sovereignty — far more serious financial consequences. According to The Wall Street Journal, the European Commission is preparing to formally to accuse the us giant Amazon is that the company had violated Antimonopoly laws and used its dominant market position to copy the successful products of European manufacturers and then sell their own cheaper counterparts, depriving European company income, including in the European market.
Here we are talking not about taxes that are imposed at low rates based on their growth in the future, and about potential fines in the tens of billions of dollars and (in a very unpleasant scenarios) about administrative prohibitions on the conduct of certain activities on the territory of the European Union. In the future under the same antitrust measures it will be easy to bring hardly any American IT giants, clearing the European market for private companies.