I mean friendly nations can coexist with tarriffs structures perfectly amicably.
What's not normal is trying to use tarrifs the way the US is, and the frequency of their adjustment, as well as stated motivation (punitive rather then achieving any sort of strategic goal).
Switzerland has plenty of tariffs around farmed goods to keep our farmer market healthy. But it does indeed make products more expensive (and higher quality) and everybody here knows and most accept that.
Funny you're mentioning Switzerland where whole families travel to France for cheaper products just to meet the quota per person when you come back from your weekend shopping.
Can't really comment on "more expensive = higher quality" since I'm biased towards France where I believe they're better at cultivating tomatoes than the Swiss.
To be fair, the costs are just less hidden in the swiss model.
If you do internal subsidies (the EU/US approach) instead of tariffs on imports, then a fraction of your taxes gets diverted to farmers instead.
Sadly this whole issue is difficult to side-step completely because if you do neither subsidies nor tariffs, your local food industry just dies and that is a really undesirable outcome if you want to avoid famines.
I love going to France, and really like their quality approach. But try going to Germany or Austria. Basically the same price or more expensive at the same or worse quality.
Products are not higher quality… the only thing these tariffs accomplish is basically they allow agriculture industry to do the things the old way. Keep status quo, aka remain extremely uncompetitive and unproductive.
If Switzerland opened to EU competition then they would’ve seen multi store farming like in Netherlands. Subsidies would fare better.
I’m obviously operating within the assumption that Switzerland would follow EU regulations. So no chloride chicken. I agree with beef, much needs to be done. But… bells attached to cows are considered as torture.
Yea sure? Of course. If US wanna tax their own population for imports it's fine (just like most countries have import taxes aka tariffs). But my question was about sanctions.
The reveal of much of the right wing influencer network being funded by Russian state actors makes this more understandable. https://apnews.com/article/russian-interference-presidential...
It goes from bottom to top with Tulsi Gabbard parroting Russian talking points on Russian state TV then from the White House and now those right wing influencers repeating Russian talking points at White House press conferences. It's probably the most successful adversarial state sponsored social engineering effort ever.
I actually had Iran in mind. Russia at least ostensibly behaved in a way that's worth sanctioning by destabilizing the world. Iran just held some hostages 50 years ago, as best I can tell, and it's hard to be angry at that. Israel has harmed many times more Americans than Iran has, but Israel also seems to be the reason we continue to sanction Iran. It makes no sense on the face of it.
I mean, so are we. So are the Saudies. So is Israel. So is Turkey. So is the UAE. I'm sure I missed some interests. I think we have the greatest responsibility to unwind our own efforts.
