There are rules for RoW and there are rules for the USA. Astonishing that the G7 falls in this trap again and again (for example Basel III). The US was a major driver in pillar 2 but won‘t adhere to it. Probably companies will restructure their organization to have two streams and exploit it. Despite GILTI, some US companies have low ETRs.
We're working on building our own military to a point we won't need them anymore. This is all temporary appeasement, but they'll pay the price eventually.
If this were the intention we'd be building drone factories, steel forges, munitions factories and hiring troops instead of buying overpriced F-35s for which american permission to operate can be withdrawn at will and which have proven to be too fragile to be allowed to be deployed in Ukraine.
The top priority still appears to be "please daddy".
shrug we were doing all of these at a small scale even before the war.
Articles that brag about delivering the equivalent few weeks' worth of Russian industrial production to the Ukrainian front lines every 6 months actually kind of underline the point.
It reminds me of the articles just before the summer 2023 offensive whose numbers spelled doom to anybody who had a limited understanding of military realities: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64391272
> With just 13 days until the Trump-imposed deadline to conclude a EU-U.S. deal, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen decided the time for conventional negotiating tactics was over.
> She floated the idea that the EU’s 27 countries could join forces with 12 members of the Asian-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership bloc (CPTPP) — which now includes the U.K. — to form a new world trade initiative.
> The new grouping would redesign a rules-based global trading order, reforming or perhaps even replacing the now largely defunct World Trade Organization, she said.
> Crucially, the U.S. would not automatically be invited.
In EU-focused online forums, I have recently seen MAGA referred to as "Make America Go Away."
I chuckled at first, but as a beneficiary of Pax Americana, this is a really sad state of affairs. However, I am really pro-EU, and I hope that we are up to the task coming forth.
I support this 100%, and have said nearly these exact words in the past. However, the concept of Pax __ applies to the entire "world." Even the USA's supposed enemies benefited from the rules based global order, a lot of the time. If Pax Europa is to be a thing, it needs to have effects beyond Europe's borders. The democratic European way, surviving and thriving, is the last hope for a bright near-term future for all of humanity. I truly believe this.
note: I edited my gp comment prior to seeing your response.
Pax Romana - the origin of this phrase - was limited to the Europe and the Mediterranean region. During that same time frame, Han Dynasty china was anything but at pax.
We can aim for the same regional scope again. I don't think all conflicts around the world should be our business.
Yes, maybe after your response, I put the word 'world' in scare quotes = "world" thinking about this exact issue. Other thoughts were 'known world,' 'visible world'... but those don't translate to today.
I need to set my profile's delay number higher to allow for more comment editing time.
I hear what you are saying, and I respect it. However, what happens when some group threatens to shut down a major global shipping route that the EU relies on?
What happens when imperialism spreads near our borders, but not yet across them? Do we wait until the final moment to mobilize? That seems like horrible planning.
In the period between WW II and Iraq II, the USA used soft and military power to keep basic world order (country borders) and commerce running. It was the enforcer of the post-war Rules Based Order.
This was a good thing, that I believe we all took for granted. Even the USA has now taken that for granted. That historical period is now officially over.
> I chuckled at first, but as a beneficiary of Pax Americana, this is a really sad state of affairs
I've felt some of the same. I believe what I'm actually attached to (both emotionally and financially) is the stability of the old system. As you say in a later comment, the value of the American hegemony has been in the fixed but flexible rules and the absence of any direct power politics. The market based economy and "American philosophy" has been secondary.
It's easy to forget that we used to have small skirmishes with neighboring countries constantly. My country (Denmark) had a war with Sweden every 40 years up into the 19th century.
We have to remember that a new system, possibly without America at the helm, cannot be one of power politics. We cannot let the paranoia of Trumps America dictate our politics.
That group of authoritarian believers has won the USA, and are now very focused on the EU. This is very similar to how the CCP views Taiwan. The EU and Taiwan are examples of the other possibility, and the authoritarians just can't have that.
See Musk's comments [0] and very obious regarding German politics, the CPAC gathering in Hungary, the ownership of euronews.com, the recent creation of r/europe_sub... We need to stop being passive about all of this, or democracy will become a historical note, and not something that we all enjoy on a day-to-day basis.
We have all taken democracy for granted, like breathable air. We can no longer do that.
edit:
[0] I am sorry if it makes anyone comfortable, but the richest man in the world clearly gave 2 nazi salutes live to the world, with far too few repercussions. This is the reality which we need understand, and fight vigorously.
I understand the sentiment, I really do. I also acknowledge that what you offer is more immediately actionable than what I have, but I really hope we can be a little more thoughtful than that.
I happen to believe that the success we've seen has been, in large part at least, due to being able to take democracy for granted. We haven't had to fight for basic rights or the privilege of survival, so we've been able to fight much more ideological fights. We have rightfully had the assumption that even as we all fight bitterly over politics, you won't send your navy to attack my ports. We were safe in our disagreements being intellectual.
I fear that while defending our stable democratic institutions we end up supplanting those very same institutions with the enemy. You cannot fight lawlessness with lawlessness, you must chose to be soft and level headed, even it feels most hobbling. Else we risk becoming Trump in the name of warding him off.
This is not true, and worse, this attitude is self-defeating when you have no control over the law nor its application (as is arguably the case right now in the USA). True, you cannot rebuild on top of lawlessness, but you need to reach the rebuilding stage first. And the further you let the current regime entrench itself, the more lawlessness will be required to destroy it.
The term "lawlessness" in the way I use it isn't narrowly scoped to the specific set of laws a government has arrived at. I'm not saying you must follow the laws of the system to break the system, that will never happen. When I say "lawlessness" I'm thinking of a broad idea of a person who will succumb to no law.
I agree that there must be turmoil to institute a new order, that is true no matter which dominant system you seek to replace, but at the end of the turmoil you must establish new rules, new law, which the winners of the struggle must then themselves adhere to. In this way they are not lawless, merely in disagreement with what the laws are.
I am not sure what exactly gp was referring to, but the authoritarians are currently winning by simply, and peacefully, "flooding the zone." Well, they also own the majority of the media. However, they are not yet all powerful.
We need a grassroots pro-EU, pro-democracy, NAFO-type movement. For now, we need to just fight with posts, comments, and podcasts, across all social media. As sad and boring as it might be, that's exactly how elections are won and lost these days.
We need more than that. We need a hybrid warfare style approach. Flooding social media with pro-EU propaganda LLMs, sponsoring opposition politicians in authoritarian states and inciting protests against authoritarian governments.
Our adversaries are all doing it. It's time we stop tying our own hands.
I am honestly not sure what I am proposing myself, exactly. However, if we read each other correctly, I think I agree with your concerns.
Might we both be touching on/dancing around the concept of the "paradox of tolerance?" [0]
As a practical example, one of the most European things in modern history was this beheading of the monarch live music video [1], which was broadcast to the world as part of the Olympic opening ceremonies in Paris. I remember seeing how uncomfortable it made the broadcasters in various countries. It was glorious. Revolution can happen, and this was a reminder.
We should never shy away from discussion of our history. I am not a huge metal fan, but this tiny part of the opening ceremonies event makes me very emotional and proud to my deepest core. I still cannot believe it happened. We should be reminding everyone of the French revolution, its non-ideal near term outcomes, and other uncomfortable European history very regularly. As you stated in your original reply, it is easy to forget how we got here.
> You cannot fight lawlessness with lawlessness, you must chose to be soft and level headed, even it feels most hobbling. Else we risk becoming Trump in the name of warding him off.
I am with you my friend! In the interest of open discussion and understanding, I made this separate comment to ask you, or anyone, to please share what your concerns were here. If you don't mind, could you please give an example of how you see it possibly going wrong?
>See Musk's comments [0] and very obious regarding German politics, the CPAC gathering in Hungary, the ownership of euronews.com, the recent creation of r/europe_sub... We need to stop being passive about all of this, or democracy will become a historical note, and not something that we all enjoy on a day-to-day basis.
What exactly are the actual issues and the solutions you propose other than speech censorship to ban the right wing opinions you dislike? Your post is just reddit style left wing virtue signaling, while not talking about any actual issues the people are having that make them vote right: cost of living, stagnating wages, illegal immigrations, wealth inequality etc. People in EU don't care if a US billionaire Elon makes the Nazi salute in the US, where it's not illegal, when they can't afford to pay rent. It's a non-issue in EU outside the terminally online redditors left wing bubble.
>We have all taken democracy for granted, like breathable air.
We don't have a democracy when the EU representative, Ursula v.d. Leyen is not democratically elected by the people and whenever the people try to vote for a right wing candidate those candidates get banned/excluded form elections to "protect democracy" which is ironic and is what's causing the disdain of the voters and right wing shift, away from the status quo: people don't feel represented by their leaders and dislike the censorship masquerading as "protection of democracy" happening in Europe.
The comment above embodies everything we need be aware of, and fight against.
10% something factual, 90% repetition of provably disconnected from reality, yet appealing sounding soundbites/memes sent from on high. Zero policy recommendations, one-hundred percent vibes.
And since the facts are lacking in the argument, the ad hominem style attack is included for good measure.
If that's the way you put it, I can say the exact same for your comments. Your pervasive attitude against open discourse, advocating only for "fight against" without having a discussion, is what leads to the animosity of people making them vote right. People are tired of not having a voice and just being censored by liberal keyboard warriors who think they're protecting democracy by implementing speech censorship laws the Nazis and Soviets would dream of, but of course in the name of good.
My argument, if you cared to read it, were that EU voters care more about having a well paying job and affording rent than what hand gestures a billionaire does in his own country outside the EU. If you think Elon is bad, you have no idea on what other wealthy and powerful people are like.
What arguments did you bring other than advocating towards violence because you didn't like my PoV?
> People are tired of not having a voice and just being censored left and right by liberal keyboard warriors
You are free to speak your mind! If it's not fit for this forum, for whatever reason, please email me at username @ gmail. However, I am sure you could provide us at least some hint about the speech that is being censored by the evil liberals, right?
If you chose not to disclose your censored speech, please tell me your policy positions. So far, you have mentioned one that probably everyone agrees with 100%, illegal immigration is bad. However, how do you propose to solve the issue? Masked men coming to courts and schools, like in the USA in 2025, or something different?
Next one please, let's get specific.
1. How exactly do you propose to solve the issues in your previously stated problems, for example, wealth inequality?
2. Which political party in the EU country of your choice has a real policy to address that as part of their platform?
> What exactly are the actual issues and the solutions you propose other than speech censorship to ban the right wing opinions you dislike?
Why is it other than? That'd be a start for one, hate speech shouldn't have a place in our society.
> People in EU don't care if a US billionaire Elon makes the Nazi salute in the US, where it's not illegal
It's not about the salute itself. It's about what it says about his views.
> We don't have a democracy when the EU representative, Ursula v.d. Leyen is not democratically elected by the people
That's a bullshit talking point. The EU commission is appointed by our democratically elected governments, the same way the US president is appointed by electors. It's one level of indirection in both cases, they are the same amount of democratic.
Furthermore, vdL is the right wing candidate. The EU has been under right wing control for as long as I can remember.
>Why is it other than? That'd be a start for one, hate speech shouldn't have a place in our society.
You do realize that by ignoring and suppressing the opinions and voices of people you dislike, you're advocating for censorship and basically implementing the same politics of fascism and tyranny that you claim to be against, right?
"Hate speech" is such a vague, broad and misused term that it's at the core abused of EU censorship actions. "You're against illegal migration? HATE SPEECH! BAN! CENSOR!"
This abuse of hate speech laws obviously doesn't work well with the voters and leads to more animosity, and feelings that the system is rigged against democracy by those in power, which causes voters to lash out by choosing the most extreme candidate that's against the status quo in order to flip the monopoly board. And the EU powers instead of admitting this and backtracking on it and making room for open conversations, simply ignores, bans, censors all contrarian options and candidates that go against the status quo, leading to a negative political feedback loop we see in the last 5-10 years: Brexit, Trump, LePenn, Georgescu, etc.
>The EU commission is appointed by our democratically elected governments
Yes, emphasis on appointed, appointed is not the same as elected. Hence, not democratically elected. How many EU taxpayers support and would vote for VdL if given the vote?
>Furthermore, VdL is the right wing candidate. The EU has been under right wing control for as long as I can remember.
Sorry to break it to you, but then your definition of right wing is super skewed.
"fascism" isn't a vague term meaning "government does things I don't like". It's a specific right wing ideology not at all related to what I was talking about.
> Yes, emphasis on appointed, appointed is not the same as elected. Hence, not democratically elected.
Appointed just like the US president or any minister in any democratic government ever. Are those not democratic?
> Sorry to break it to you, but then your definition of right wing is super skewed.
"She is a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliated European political party, the European People's Party."
I think this is completely reasonable, services should use the same customs / duties mechanism on "import" as any other goods. The income tax should be also paid the same way. And if the product is created in multiple countries (licenses, Software Components etc), they are part of the whole product and tarifs for parts of goods should similarly apply.
Ah ok, I understand. Sigh ... yeah, after the shit Ireland pulled, I guess this is the only choice left. (Ireland signing TWO agreements to apply minimum tax one with OECD, one with the EU, with the prime minister announcing wide and far on TV how important this tax was, while telling accountants they weren't going to do it, then not doing it)
On the plus side: this is going to suck bad for Ireland, and frankly they have it coming.
So it is effectively decided then, even if probably a lot of politicians still need to wake up to it, the next move is the EU taxing payments directly when they cross EU borders, contradicting half the reason the EU exists in the first place, and probably in a system that'll make EU VAT look simple. It's going to be a disaster, but not easy to exploit ... It'll take the power to tax further away from the EU and even further into the countries' own tax departments, but of course that's exactly what's needed to stop this.
And the years it'll take to do that will mean multinationals get a few more years of minimally taxed profits.
America is rapidly squandering its soft power in a foolish pursuit of short-term gains.
To pull this shit in times of a rapidly rising China and a remilitarizing EU is to accelerate the shift to multipolarism and giving up global superpower status.
Agreed. The challenge for all of us in the EU is to collectively wake up to this new reality, and do something to fill the void where we are concerned. IMO, that void is much larger than we are ready to admit.
A remilitarizing EU is no threat to the US due it's ageing demographics and declining birthrates, and lack of tech like the B2 bomber which is 35+ years old at this point. Hence why the EU doesn't get invited to peace negotiations of conflicts. EU can't even beat Russia next door, how would they challenge the US?
The GBU-57 is a modern tallboy, stop acting as if it's some sort of magic superbomb. The British dropped the Grand Slam over Germany in the fourties. And that one also penetrated 40m of earth
Europe had been enjoying decades of peace, but it is now waking up.
However there is no sense in which Western Europe is under a credible military threat by the US.
If you look at the French nuclear doctrine for instance, it is designed to make sure people do not forget we can both go MAD.
The French nuclear warning shot is designed as a reminder, it is a nuclear EMP payload shot away from populated areas, and intended as a cease and desist, without lasting damage.
Russia and the US B2 bomb strikes on Iran proved you don't need nuclear weapons to cripple a nation. The US could just use its big tech empire to cripple Europe.
Yes, the US has a higher defense budget and a larger individual economy. The entire premise of cartelizing "minimum taxation" levels seems more like anti-competitive bullying.
> and the main pressure against that is for companies or people to leave.
Has there been any serious research in this area that supports that conclusion. My impression, which is completely uninformed I admit, is that we often talk about companies leaving due to high tax burdens, but that it rarely happens. It's a politically signal, more than a factual systemic driver.
Sure, a bunch of companies have relocated to tax havens, but we're not going to solve that by regressing to a 2% universal tax rate.
A country recognizes that the rate of company creation has gone done (or some similar metric). They identify the tax rate as a reason for this. They want the tax rate to be lower to ameliorate this. They leave the agreement.
Now presumably there are penalties or such in place for this type of agreement, so it would need to be weighed as onerous enough to accept any such penalties. If it is just one country that feels this way then it might be a non-starter, but if the global minimum tax gets to a point where many countries feel this way, it would probably be viable to coordinate to leave the agreement all at once, with the remainers having little power at that point.
Citation needed, corporate taxes have been going down for decades.
> companies or people to leave.
"We can't ever tax anyone because else they would just leave; ergo nothing can or should be done about rampant inequality" is not only false, it is extremely dangerous and accelerates the fall of our democracies.
Yes and that is bad, because cartels are bad. Competition between political systems is good, for much the same reason that competition between companies is good.
How does it hurt investment? Those tiny nations are only helping eliminate an inefficient form of taxation. The main problem is that only multinationals can make use of it.
Hiding huge amounts of money in tax havens is actively detrimental to the economy. I believe the goal of any economy should be to better our lives, not hoard wealth and sit on it.
Without taxation, the infrastructures needed to maintain a healthy economy are unsustainable. We need to ensure that what companies benefit from public services is taken back so it can be reinvested.
Money is not "hidden" or "hoarded" in tax havens, nor does hoarding money affect the economy negatively. Taxation is necessary for infrastructure (though that is actually a small fraction: about 3% of US federal taxes goes to infrastructure), and I did not say or imply that taxation is unnecessary. The question of what the best level of taxation is, and what the best place to levy those taxes is, cannot be decided based on high level slogans. One thing is clear though: standardizing tax rates is bad because it removes the competitive aspect between countries. It is good if people and companies are able to move to the places that give them the best public services for the least cost, for the same reason that it is good that salaries are not standardized between companies, and the same reason why it is good that airline ticket prices are no longer standardized by the IATA and CAB.
Oh please, as far as USA goes, taxes went down especially for companies and rich. And the country is in the process of creating new massive deficit just by a massive tax cut.
