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by pjc50 492 days ago
I don't think you can rely on "no one will smash US institution X because that would be bad for everyone" any more.
1 comments

You've got to imagine there are limits, tho. I note that Trump backed off most tariffs, at least for now, when the markets got unhappy (I mean, you could believe it was due to symbolic troop movements if you wanted, I suppose?) And cloud services to Europe are _big_ business; it would not be a small market shock.

If there were to be a major migration from AWS and Azure to the likes of Hetzner, OVH and friends, also, that would likely be _permanently_ lost business for US megacorps; no-one does that sort of migration unless they really have to, so it's improbable that anyone would move back if and when the situation was resolved.

I thought he only backed off the Canadian tariffs, and only because there were retaliatory tariffs plus some symbolic concession? The China ones and the de minimis change are still in place.

Bezos turning up at the inauguration and directing the WaPo to not endorse Harris are strong hints that Amazon is probably going to be fine, but I would say that nothing is certain when dealing with someone who's deliberately unpredictable and willing to threaten allies.

> and only because there were retaliatory tariffs

Those were completely inevitable, though; the game theory behind all this stuff essentially requires them.

> plus some symbolic concession

A really utterly meaningless one, though. I'm fairly convinced that pissed-off markets were the major factor.

> I thought he only backed off the Canadian tariffs, and only because there were retaliatory tariffs plus some symbolic concession? The China ones and the de minimis change are still in place.

Also Mexico. I'd suspect most of the Chinese ones aren't long for this world, either.