The illegal kind he is not allowed to impose?
Europe
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
I'm the Trump-whisperer: Here's the translation
"Might" = "Most definitely will"
"if" = "Regardless of whether or not"
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Canada got rid of our digital services tax and it didn't help. Don't bother getting rid of anything Trump wants gone because it is just what a bunch of billionaires are telling him to do.
Oddly billionaires probably told Mark Carney the same thing so he was happy to be rid of this DST.
Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) is a major global investor in digital infrastructure and services, with over $100 billion invested in AI-related infrastructure, digital connectivity, and clean energy to support it. Their holdings focus on the essential physical and digital "backbone" required for data storage, transmission, and AI computing.
Lemmy really needs some critical thinking about Mark Carney. This is not a statesman.
We have a saying in Dutch: "If you give him a finger, he will take your whole hand."
Appeasing Trump doesn't work, because he will just demand more.
Isn't he only allowed to leverage emergency tarrifs for like 60 days or something right now?
When has that orange muppet last given a single shit about whether he was allowed to do something?
Wouldn't bet on it. He lies so much that anything he says is basically meaningless at this point. It's certainly not worth any government making any decisions based on words like this anymore.
How long until the world is vaccinated against these tariff related threats and just doesn't care anymore?
There are other countries, other continents, other markets, other currencies... Just ignore that old demented guy.
The only solution is to aggressively denazify, by aggressively replacing US tech with OSS and home grown vendors.
Do business in a country, you follow their laws.
Fuck off America.
Germany should take taxes for digital services, too! They make billions and billions... they can pay taxes
Germany is in EU, so it's not up to Germany alone, but I agree EU should do it too.
It actually is up to Germany, the EU can only make recommendations and threats, they cannot actually force their members to do anything, especially the founder members (which includes Germany)
If it is a TAX specifically on US services, it is a tariff.
But I can see they UK has designed it to go equally for everybody:
The tax targets companies whose worldwide revenues from digital activities exceed £500m ($673m), with more than £25m of the revenues from UK users.
IMO we should have a TAX specifically on US tech companies.
Taxation is done by the individual member states, not the EU. Germany could impose a digital services tax if they wanted to, without needing permission from the EU to do so.
If it is a TAX specifically on US services, it is a tariff.
But I can see they UK has designed it to go equally for everybody:
The tax targets companies whose worldwide revenues from digital activities exceed £500m ($673m), with more than £25m of the revenues from UK users.
IMO we should have a TAX specifically on US tech companies. So they would be easier to replace with European services.
Taxation is not a tariff.
If Germany wants to tax digital services (meaning all digital services and not just American digital services) that is not a tariff. Germany is free to tax digital services as long at it doesn't directly target US digital services.
Edit: This comment is a response to the initial text before being edited.
Sorry I made a pretty significant edit. Exactly because I found out that the way UK designed it, it is not a tariff.
No problem. We all misinterpret things from time to time.
I believe it is important that we don't blindly accept Trump's framing that this is a tariff, because that is exactly the framing Trump used to justify his "retaliatory" tariffs from last year.
Taxation is done by the individual member states... for now.
Due to the creation of EU debt first for COVID, then for Ukraine the EU is going to need some way of paying it back sooner or later. Expect to see some Europeans lose their shit over the next decade at the inevitable federalization this will cause. Excellent news for federalists though.
Even if at some point the EU will be given the power of taxation (which I'm not yet seeing as an inevitability at this point), that doesn't automatically mean that that power will be stripped from the individual member states.
We only need to look at the US as an example of a federation where both the federal government and the states have the power of taxation. It wouldn't be unprecedented.
The EU should ban US services from all new government contracts.
I agree, luckily many places in EU are already working on it, and a few have already replaced American services.
EU also has a program The "EuroStack" Initiative for all of EU to work on independence from US Services and technologies:
https://eurostack.eu/
He still does not recognize how laughable his "tariffs, tariffs" shouting is?
Not sure if you’ve heard but he’s both demented and unbelievably stupid.

TACO at it again
Basically he'll give corporations a reason to jack prices, the take the windfall when it's struck down....again