What right do you have to tell me what i do or do not need?
What an absolutely evil stance to have.
I think we cause issues all the time. For example, by importing trash that we do not need. It is a part of living. But the we need to address these issues, like a tax on imports. This will inevitable lead to other issues, such as the small scale import of books not being economically viable. But the fact that it causes issues is, in my mind, not a good enough argument against it. Because all things that impact other people cause issues.
How do you determine what someone does not really need?
Are you arguing for a cap on the amount of stuff a private individual can import instead of a fee? I suppose it would be a bit more invasive, but it could work and be more equal.
Things we do not need: kickstarter passion projects, temu trash, a very cool custom built split keyboard that broke after a few days. I'm not against the idea of small scale importing, I bought the super cool split keyboard afterall. But the unnecesary pleasures of life are a sometimes thing and deserves to be treated as such
Basic food and shelter are necessities. Luxuries are not. You can survive in a hut eating gruel. I known nudists who think we would be better off without clothes.
It is an issue and it needs to be addressed.
I like to do some electronics as a hobby and learning project. I was gonna try to build a thing to make my old timey doorbell intercom smart with an esp32, an audio codec and a circuit to safely read the signals.
Lots of cheap little parts I would usually get on Aliexpress. A lot of them around 50 cents or so. Now, each of them has a 3 euro fee added to it. The cost of this project would go from like 25 to like 75 euros. That seems super unacceptable to me and like it discourages experimenting with electronics, and with that a type of innovation Europe should try to encourage instead.
I’m not sure I’m following the argument here, because tariffs are all about protectionism, which is a form of reducing external competition
The author says so, if you take the time to read the actual article:
>I say this isn’t a tariff issue, and it’s not—these are existing customs charges that were waived for these low-cost shipments.
It is US companies having to pay VAT just like EU companies (the author seems surprised EU member states have varying VAT rates, but it is the same across the US), and private shipment companies deciding to push administrative costs to the customers. And inflation and energy costs soaring, due to a certain (US) administration going all-in on AI and foreign wars (which also affect intra-EU shipping).
But guess what: it costs less to ship something between two neighbouring European countries than across the Atlantic ocean. That's still not a tariff.
If they'd just kept the threshold at $200, all the chaos could have been avoided...
Didn't the US also end de minimis exceptions recently? Can we really expect other countries and economic zones to keep them if we don't?
Edit: do those downvoting disagree that a focus on bilateral trade imbalances and tariffs is an idiosyncrasy of Trump, and that we would not be seeing similar trade wars with a different president? If so, please make your case. He has repeatedly stated that that is what he feels is important, and has shared explicit motivation for broad tariffs based on facile derivations from bilateral trade imbalances. So it's pretty difficult to see it instead as a reasoned response to long-term bond rates.