Ministers hope this announcement is a reasonable basis for carrying on with negotiations over a trade deal that could lead to them falling or being dropped entirely.
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A guess. But it seems likely trumps change from threatening indevidual nations. To attacking all imports equally. Was the result of some nations backbone so to speak.
It sounds like an attempt to stick to his claims it for the US. While still creating a form of national sales tax.
But its worth remembering. 10% is not going to effect the reasons companies build outside the US. So will not have much effect on increasing US over foreign sales.
So will not do anything but increase costs to his voters.
Lets not cut the rope he is wrapping round his neck.
What would that entail?
Personally, not having the Digital Service Tax on the table - Big Web should be paying more, not less, and tax breaks for billionaires looks bad when you are cutting money to the old and disabled.
I feel the government know they’re between a rock and a hard place. There’s no leverage we have to use against these multinational companies.
If only the Labour government would see the benefits of being in a larger trading bloc on our doorstep? 🤔 Sadly I think this just confirms to Starmer that being out with 10% tarrifs is better than being in with 20%.
No leverage?
Pay your fair share of tax, or lose access to this market you’re making millions from. That seems like leverage enough to me, am I missing something?
Britain is a service economy. We go after foreign tech, they go after our finance, outsourcing, management, legal and creative arts sectors. We can’t compete on cheap manufacturing. Expensive manufacturing doesn’t employ many people.
Leverage would be saying to these companies “pay your fair share of tax or we will use this other provider / service / company that does and you won’t make any money”. The problem is in a lot of cases we don’t have alternatives that work either in the same way or as cheaply or at a large enough scale to be drip on replacements. These companies are also often large employers so you have to think about where and how you’re going to transfer the jobs.
Oh, because we’d be at a great loss here if Amazon suddenly disappeared. What with their poverty wages the government has to top up, and the avoiding paying tax, and their exploitation of, well everything.
Look, I’m not against shifting Amazon. But what is the viable UK alternative? Any alternative needs to be at the same price and convenience otherwise it will simply fail in the market. Like it or not there’s a reason why Amazon is Amazon.
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The US wasn’t reliable before Brexit 😄. Even as far back as Obama using the UK as a whipping boy during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and deliberately conflating BP as a British company despite it being half American at the time and the actual spill found to be the fault of a US drilling company. That and casually hacking the German Chancellor’s phone. The US have always been America First. They just didn’t thump their chests (relatively speaking) as much as Trump.
Even some small word saying something better than ‘it could have been worse’. It really cements how pathetic our country has become.
Fair, I feel the same. But I think this reflects where we are as a nation right now.
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That’s the end of America right there, folks.
Bahahahha the GST you had to have
