> They menace and threaten "people just out and about in the neighborhood"? It is hard to engage in good faith when you are baldly making statements that are completely unsupported.
There are no shortage of videos showing ICE agents on roaming patrols in Minnesota -- and elsewhere -- menacing anyone they come across who appears undesirable. All you have to do is not look away.
I’m not sure why you won’t acknowledge that a tax that affects domestic and foreign companies equally is not protectionist. But here we are.
I’m not saying that taxes don’t have an impact on the economy, or the business environment, or growth, or profits…of course they do! Maybe the tax will lower demand which makes investment less appealing, and so less investment from Americans happens as a result. But there's also less investment from the Europeans in that case! And most of all, it has nothing to do with the competitiveness of American products in the European market, because the European products face the same tax. VAT does not distort the relative price between European and foreign products.
If you want to say that tax revenue is used for subsidies that are anticompetitive — well money is fungible, you can’t blame that specifically on VAT revenue, and you should be making an argument against subsidies, not the VAT. But then you will need to address the many ways in which the US subsidizes its own industries.
My place hasn’t changed at all. Everything I’ve said is internally consistent. You are welcome to view any form of taxation as an impediment to “free trade” but that’s not how competition works. Feel free to continue believing that taxation is inherently protectionist, I’ll leave it at that.
How is it protectionist if the European companies also pay it?
You are arguing about rules that apply to all companies competing in Europe and then extrapolating that to say that “American companies competing in Europe” are mistreated.
1) EU businesses have to deal with complicated sales tax arrangements that vary by state and municipality.
2) EU businesses have to operate in their own environment and also face the VAT. There is no protectionism here. The playing field with respect to VAT is balanced, regardless of which side of the pond is (...was) an easier business environment to operate in.