Chronic. We hardly dare whisper it to Europeans: prepare to be disappointed in case Joe Biden enters the White House. Of course, they would see a familiar face again, that of Barack Obama’s vice-president. It would be the end of the insults and reels, which were the lot of Donald Trump for four years. “We must end an artificial trade war that the Trump administration has started”, said one of Mr Biden’s top advisers, Tony Blinken.
But the latter to point immediately “An objective problem” : the “Persistent and growing imbalance in trade in agricultural products due to rules that prevent us from selling products where we are very competitive”. So the agricultural quarrel threatens again. The case is a casus belli, the Europeans do not want chicken with chlorine or GMOs.
The second subject concerns the Airbus-Boeing conflict, which will escalate as soon as the Europeans can impose taxes on Boeing for undue subsidies in the wake of a judgment by the World Trade Organization (WTO) expected soon. The Obama-Biden administration did not settle this quarrel in its day. Mr. Biden, who has muted his old free trade beliefs to win back the white working-class electorate, will he do it when Boeing is at its worst? We can doubt it.
Doubling the taxation of foreign profits
Added to this is the hottest subject: the taxation of multinationals, especially digital ones. France risks being imposed tariffs on luxury products in January 2021, in retaliation for its GAFA tax (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) that it saw fit to impose when the Americans left in June the negotiating table, supposed to introduce a tax on the turnover of these giants, at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Will she be saved by a President Biden? Nothing is less sure.
First, the Obama-Biden administration had not budged an iota on this subject, and violently fought the taxation of Apple in Ireland, imposed by the European Commission. Then, Donald Trump made a small revolution in this area, gone unnoticed: the United States filled in the holes that allowed their multinationals not to pay taxes. Until 2017, American companies were taxed on their global profits, but this regulation was a Swiss cheese, which allowed not to pay tax on the condition of accommodating its profits abroad, as in Ireland.
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