Epic tariff battle of a New Age

Pic.: flux24.ro

Sens. Lindsey Graham (recognized as a terrorist and extremist in Russia) and Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation seeking to impose primary and secondary sanctions against Russia if it does not agree to long lasting peace with its neighboring country, Ukraine.

The two were joined by a group of 50 lawmakers who agreed to support sanctions on Russia in addition to a 500 percent tariff on imported goods from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other products if efforts to end the war are not advanced.

“The sanctions against Russia require tariffs on countries who purchase Russian oil, gas, uranium and other products. They are hard hitting for a reason,” the Senators wrote in a release.

…Do the senators understand that such tariffs will rise over gasoline prices in the US, since world oil prices will raise sharply?

Pic.: FT

EU readies counterstrike on Big Tech, US banks over Trump’s mega tariffs. Brussels sees America’s transatlantic trade surplus in services as its Achilles’ heel, writes POLITICO.

The European Union is considering opening up a new battlefront as President Donald Trump prepares to impose so-called reciprocal tariffs on all of America’s trading partners on Wednesday.

“Liberation Day,” as Trump has called it, would mark the biggest escalation in the trade war he first launched against Canada, Mexico and China following his Jan. 20 inauguration. Universal tariffs soon followed on steel and aluminum and then on cars — putting the onus on the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to defend the economic interests of the 27-member bloc.

Now, with Washington threatening to punish the EU further, not only for its existing tariffs but also for what it sees as nontariff barriers such as its tech regulations, Brussels is preparing to up the ante.

In targeting U.S. services, Brussels could be thinking of bulge-bracket banks like J.P. Morgan or Bank of America, or tech players like Elon Musk’s social network X, search giant Google, or Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer.

“We are certainly not excluding a bigger response, a better response and an even more creative response through services, through [intellectual property rights],” a senior European Union official told reporters in mid-March.

“All these options are on the table today.”

“America’s tech giants, financial industry, and pharma companies have deep roots in Europe. Push too far, and Brussels could tighten the screws: digital levies on Silicon Valley, regulatory clamps on Wall Street, or taxes on U.S. pharma exports,” said Tobias Gehrke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“America may wield the bigger stick, but Europe has plenty of sharp stones to throw.”

As a last resort the EU can deploy its trade “bazooka” — the Anti-Coercion Instrument. As the name suggests, it would enable a broad-spectrum response, including targeting services, if Brussels concludes that U.S. actions are excessive.

Within six months the Commission could go as far as to pull the plug on Musk’s X; restrict the intellectual property rights of U.S. tech giants; or bar them from investing in the EU.

The End of globalization: Trump imposes tariffs on countries around the world on all goods imported into the US.

The US explained the absence of Russia from the tariff list. Russia is not on the US tariff list because the United States does not trade with it, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated in an interview with Fox News.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs