"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
On the contrary. Every nation has the right to impose tarrifs, duties, etc. on goods entering their country. Of course, they have to decide whether it is worth the reciprocal tarrifs. Trade war.
Europe has already gotten away with adding VATs to American imports while rebating the VAT to their own producers when exported outside Europe. Their VAT revenue makes their corporate taxes lower than they would otherwise be. The American counterstroke should have been to remove all corporate taxes and replace with a NRST that would apply to everything sold within the US but not on goods exported. That would have given our manufacturing sector back a level playing field. Hasn't happened, although the NRST gains a little bit more support every year. If Europe just added a percentage to their VATs and rebated it to countries that had signed Kyoto, they could backdoor the US into paying.
"F*ck Chirac! France has NO business forcing Americans to pay any kind of taxes. France, keep your smelly snout out of our affairs! NO!!!"
France has the sovereign right to place whatever kind of taxes on imports that they desire, for any reason they desire. We have the sovereign right to retaliate in kind. I bet we could hurt them more than they could hurt us. All it would require is the BALLS to do it!
Well put.
Actually, he wasn't talking about taxing Americans, he was talking about adding a tax to American products sold in the EU to hurt our exports, because we refused the "Kyoto" tax scam.