Some of the biggest names in tech were standing behind US President Donald Trump at his inauguration in January.
The so-called ‘tech bros’ or ‘broligarchy’ have embraced Mr Trump, with many CEOs welcoming his anti-regulation policies.
Having received millions in donations from these billionaires, surely the US President wouldn’t do anything to hurt the country’s tech companies?
But these firms could well end up being caught in the crossfire of an EU-US trade war.
“The ACI allows the European Union to suspend intellectual property rights, it allows some people to use software for free, for example licence fees on things like streaming services or software could be suspended,” said Conall Mac Coille, Chief Economist at Bank of Ireland.
Fucking do it!
This is what Cory Doctorow has been telling Canada to do for months now.
Also worth noting: tech companies would not be “in the crossfire” — they are the primary fire.
On Democracy Now:
And if they do remove these laws, if we do allow domestic tech competitors all over the world to reverse engineer, modify and erode the high monopoly rents extracted by these American tech firms, we do something very effective in this trade war, because the only thing keeping the S&P 500 afloat are these tech monopolists. If you take the Big Tech stocks out of the S&P 500, you’ve got a stock market that has been in decline for a decade. And when you decompose their balance sheets and you see where they get all their money, it’s from price gouging on repairs, service, parts, consumables, software.
Btw, I think a great thing would be tariffs, or more taxes on private data. Make companies pay for hoarding them and for exporting them into other countries. Maybe not in every case, but if it’s not just processed directly for the user themselves.
No they won’t. Because the EU is not stupid and neither is the US (despite recent events)
That is something that would have major implications for Ireland where big tech means big employment and big corporate tax receipts for the Government.
They’ll want to protect as much tax evasion as possible. Trump is a transactional president. Give him some stuff, he gives you some stuff. Let US mega corporations funnel tax through the EU, be more sympathetic to trade. Or in other words “put on the green jersey”.
